Been listening to some Bhante Punnaji and I’ve like what I heard but I’ve seen online he may be controversial. Is this to do with his unorthodox Pali translations or is it even true?
Thanks friend for your input
With Late Bhante Punnaji explanation, one needs to:
- Be patient to follow his details explanation. If possible also try to learn sutta on the side to verify it in your practice.
- Keep practice especially sila and limited samadhi in daily life (24 hours).
- Keep investigate with your own experience and sutta. See how your experience match all the experience described in Sutta.
With perseverance and patient in practice, surely one can achieve the same result.
Whether it is true or not, it is all depends on your result. If you practice and manage to get good result, then you can decide whether it is true or not.
From my personal experience, I also hesitant to hear his explanation before. But by keep hearing and investigate the sutta especially look at each individual pali term, then suddenly everything make sense.
Then, It is possible to understand the meaning of Buddha words and practice it in daily life. The theory has become practical and real.
Couple points to help your:
- Sometime Late Bhante didn’t provide the Sutta number, so you need to find the Sutta that he referred to, then you can understand it better. The sutta is there, but it is hidden.
It took me to read all Sutta couple of time to find the exact sutta.
-
Also, Need to be patient, and patient again in practice. Wisdom/knowledge can only arise when you meet the conditions.
-
Don’t get too caught up with the current translations or even his translations. The most important things is whether you can implement the understanding into practice of your daily life.
-
His explanation can be heavily go on psychological science, so some people got turn off because of this. But if one understand Buddha teaching can be biological, chemical, psychological and more. Current science is not even there yet.
Also, As Buddha said in DN 9:
… ‘When you practice accordingly, corrupted behaviors will be given up in you and purified behaviors will grow. You’ll enter and remain in the fullness and abundance of wisdom, having realized it with your own insight in this very life.’
Poṭṭhapāda, you might think: ‘Corrupted behaviors will be given up and purified behaviors will grow. One will enter and remain in the fullness and abundance of wisdom, having realized it with one’s own insight in this very life. But such a life is suffering.’
But you should not see it like this. Corrupting behaviors will be given up and purified behaviors will grow. One will enter and remain in the fullness and abundance of wisdom, having realized it with one’s own insight in this very life. And there will be only joy and happiness, calm, sati and sampajanna. Such a life is blissful.
If it is not, then it is ok. You can throw it out. 
Thank u my friend in the Dhamma
Every monk and person has their own interpretation of the dhamma. Rarely will you find 2 people with the exact same beliefs and ideas.
Overall, it comes down to what their overall takeaway or idea is that hasn’t been touched on before and Ven Punnaji brings a lot.
I think of all the talks I’ve listened to from Ven Punnaji this one is by far the talk that shows how different he is from other monks, it’s such a great talk that I even backed up in case google deletes it. It’s 2 hours long, I recommend watching it in its own tab as the suttacentral forum sometimes resets the video.
2 Likes
I absolutely will, it will be my next listen. Thanks for the input. Although I was a bit confussed about some of his translation I can tell he has some awesome insights