The Noble Eightfold Path Quotes

“Beings are the owners of their actions, the heirs of their actions; they spring from their actions, are bound to their actions, and are supported by their actions. Whatever deeds they do, good or bad, of those they shall be heirs.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“Mindfulness brings to light experience in its pure immediacy. It reveals the object as it is before it has been plastered over with conceptual paint, overlaid with interpretations.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“The tool the Buddha holds out to free the mind from desire is understanding. Real renunciation is not a matter of compelling ourselves to give up things still inwardly cherished, but of changing our perspective on them so that they no longer bind us. When we understand the nature of desire, when we investigate it closely with keen attention, desire falls away by itself, without need for struggle.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“We have to be prepared and willing to discover what is true even at the cost of our comfort. For real security always lies on the side of truth, not on the side of comfort.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“The importance of right view can be gauged from the fact that our perspectives on the crucial issues of reality and value have a bearing that goes beyond mere theoretical convictions. They govern our attitudes, our actions, our whole orientation to existence. Our views might not be clearly formulated in our mind; we might have only a hazy conceptual grasp of our beliefs. But whether formulated or not, expressed or maintained in silence, these views have a far-reaching influence. They structure our perceptions, order our values, crystallize into the ideational framework through which we interpret to ourselves the meaning of our being in the world.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“Like a lake unruffled by any breeze, the concentrated mind is a faithful reflector that mirrors whatever is placed before it exactly as it is.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“Buddhism, with its non-theistic framework, grounds its ethics, not on the notion of obedience, but on that of harmony.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“The tool the Buddha holds out to free the mind from desire is understanding.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“A spiritual tradition is not a shallow stream in which one can wet one’s feet and then beat a quick retreat to the shore. It is a mighty, tumultuous river which would rush through the entire landscape of one’s life, and if one truly wishes to travel on it, one must be courageous enough to launch one’s boat and head out for the depths.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“The mind itself—the seemingly solid, stable mind—dissolves into a stream of cittas flashing in and out of being moment by moment, coming from nowhere and going nowhere, yet continuing in sequence without pause.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“The Buddha teaches that feeling is an inseparable concomitant of consciousness, since every act of knowing is coloured by some affective tone.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“The choice of a spiritual path is closer to marriage: one wants a partner for life, one whose companionship will prove as trustworthy and durable as the pole star in the night sky.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“When the training matures, the eye of wisdom opens by itself, penetrating the truths and freeing the mind from bondage.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“When Nibbāna is seen, it is realized to be the state of peace, free from the turmoil of becoming.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“It is this craving which produces repeated existence, is bound up with delight and lust, and seeks pleasure here and there, namely, craving for sense pleasures, craving for existence, and craving for non-existence.9”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“concomitant”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“(cittānupassanā)”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“When the stored up kamma meets with conditions favourable to its maturation, it awakens from its dormant state and triggers off some effect that brings due compensation for the original action. The ripening may take place in the present life, in the next life, or in some life subsequent to the next. A kamma may ripen by producing rebirth into the next existence, thus determining the basic form of life; or it may ripen in the course of a lifetime, issuing in our varied experiences of happiness and pain, success and failure, progress and decline. But whenever it ripens and in whatever way, the same principle invariably holds: wholesome actions yield favourable results, unwholesome actions yield unfavourable results.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“He says that whatever one reflects upon frequently becomes the inclination of the mind. If”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“As he goes on striving along the path of concentration, his exertion activates five mental factors which come to his aid. These factors are intermittently present in ordinary undirected consciousness, but there they lack a unifying bond and thus do not play any special role. However, when activated by the work of meditation, these five factors pick up power, link up with one another, and steer the mind towards samādhi, which they will govern as the “jhāna factors,” the factors of absorption (jhānanga). Stated in their usual order the five are: initial application of mind (vitakka), sustained application of mind (vicāra), rapture (pīti), happiness (sukha), and one-pointedness (ekaggatā). Initial application of mind does the work of directing the mind to the object. It takes the mind, lifts it up, and drives it into the object the way one drives a nail through a block of wood. This done, sustained application of mind anchors the mind on the object, keeping it there through its function of examination. To clarify the difference between these two factors, initial application is compared to the striking of a bell, sustained application to the bell’s reverberations. Rapture, the third factor, is the delight and joy that accompany a favourable interest in the object, while happiness, the fourth factor, is the pleasant feeling that accompanies successful concentration. Since rapture and happiness share similar qualities they tend to be confused with each other, but the two are not identical. The difference between them is illustrated by comparing rapture to the joy of a weary desert-farer who sees an oasis in the distance, happiness to his pleasure when drinking from the pond and resting in the shade. The fifth and final factor of absorption is one-pointedness, which has the pivotal function of unifying the mind on the object.2 When concentration is developed, these five factors spring up and counteract the five hindrances. Each absorption factor opposes a particular hindrance. Initial application of mind, through its work of lifting the mind up to the object, counters dullness and drowsiness. Sustained application, by anchoring the mind on the object, drives away doubt. Rapture shuts out ill will, happiness excludes restlessness and worry, and one-pointedness counters sensual desire, the most alluring inducement to distraction. Thus, with the strengthening of the absorption factors, the hindrances fade out and subside. They are not yet eradicated—eradication can only be effected by wisdom, the third division of the path—but they have been reduced to a state of quiescence where they cannot disrupt the forward movement of concentration.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“Speech can break lives, create enemies, and start wars, or it can give wisdom, heal divisions, and create peace. This has always been so, yet in the modern age the positive and negative potentials of speech have been vastly multiplied by the tremendous increase in the means, speed, and range of communications.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“Trustworthy and durable as a pole star in the night sky.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“One-pointedness of mind explains the fact that in any act of consciousness there is a central point of focus, towards which the entire objective datum points from its outer peripheries to its inner nucleus.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“Samādhi, as wholesome concentration, collects together the ordinarily dispersed and dissipated stream of mental states to induce an inner unification.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“Truthful speech provides, in the sphere of interpersonal communication, a parallel to wisdom in the sphere of private understanding.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

“Delusion (moha) means mental darkness: the thick coat of insensitivity which blocks out clear understanding.”
― Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering