Did meditation; when concentration on the breath at the tip of the nose suddenly controller has disappeared and cittarupa came without control.Is it a stage that knower and doer disappeared?after the experience feel like no self at that time.

What is the common denominator between the happiness derived from family life and the happiness derived from being a recluse?

I know that marriage is a secular event in Buddhism, but what are the different attitudes are there for or against marriage? And what type of Buddhists(Theravada, Mahayana, Sangha, Lay etc) claim these views?

Real question (this happened today). Imagine you're meditating by the fireplace. Outside is cold winter with snow. You have achieved a nice level of concentration, and suddenly you see a stink bug awoken by the heat, crawling into the fireplace. Your choices: - Let it keep crawling into fire, noting "crawling, crawling". - Pray for it to achieve a speedy human rebirth. - "Save" it by taking outside and letting die from the cold. - Put it in a safe place inside the house and let it die from hunger and dehydration. - Put it in a safe place inside the house and provide care and feeding. - Hop on an airplane and take it to China, its natural habitat. - Focus on achieving Enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. - Simply switch attention away from the issue. - There is no stink bug. - Mu. - Your own option. You have about five minutes left on the timer, so you can either finish your meditation properly and then act, or choose to interrupt the session. What teachings are relevant in this case? What should I do, according to Dharma, and why?

Why do some Buddhists regard nirvana as an important goal while other want better rebirth? Do all Buddhists have the same goal and if not why?

When doing walking felt a space at the top of the head. After done some meditation the space began to expand .What is this?And there is a kind of a heart beat like inside the space.

What is the Pali word for mundane knowledge

I meditate daily, for around 30 minutes or so, I have been on and off for the last few yew years. I only ever do a simple breathing meditation and I find it tends to make my mind smoother and more relaxed (compared to days I do not sit). I am also in the process of becoming a mathematician (hopefully completing my PhD in the next few months). Before embarking on my PhD I worked in IT as a developer/support manager, so my work has always been fairly cerebral. Given this context, I was wondering - are there particular types of meditation that specifically improve mental ability ? I know one of the obvious answers is that solving a problem in pure math is really a form of meditation, and I should probably just continue with the daily grind. I'm hoping for a bit more though. Thanks

Some people have the ability to have for-spelling dreams. Imagine that someones'face changes into a devil and making a nightmare of it, could this be a dream revealing to the dreamer some information about other peoples state. Or can only demons'revealing dreams which are calm contain true messages? So this question concerns people who are usually gifted with visions etc.

I have an issue picking meditation to practice during my free time as a medical student. My free time is limited and my stress levels are sky high. What is the best meditation practice for me out there? something that will keep me awake as well as improve my power of focus. My attention deficit is creating huge problems in my studies. --- Thanks you guys... the 1st answer is the most comprehensive. I do remember when I was a teenager I used to practice Metta mediation and had a better time falling asleep. But as I became a medical student and am currently studying in my 3rd year, my mind got clogged with the ever increasing amount of knowledge and stress, that I felt like I was trapped in this dogma of man made knowledge and lost all the freedom I had as kid. But I feel now, that that freedom I lost is actually mostly because I lost my path as a meditator and a Buddhist practitioner more than anything else. I should find the time to do these little things, because they are those little things that makes us complete. Thanks so much for the responses!

I read the following in the PTS Pali dictionary: > *Saṃsāra "whose beginning and end are alike unthinkable", i. e., without beginning or end.* Are there any Pali suttas that support this view of endless samsara without an end?

How do we apply reincarnation to phenomena such as reproduction by binary fission (amoeba) and creating animals like Dolly the sheep from a single cell? Also, why the population is rising in the animal kingdom including humans, surely, it cannot be other beings from different realms are coming to earth. I am so confused about this although I am a practicing Buddhist.

The Buddha spoke about kalapa's. A body, including the mind, consists of tiny particles which arise and cease in a everlasting flow of sequence. Karma as the law of action/reaction. Unwholesome acts cause unwholesome results for the producer of that action and wholesome acts cause wholesome results. Neutral action causes neutral /no results. Is there a correlation between this truth and the truth of Newton's third law of motion? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Since quantum physics entered the realm of scientific knowledge, on a sub atomic level action reaction became not absolute anymore in predictability. Is it a delusion to suggest that on a highly subtle level unwholesome acts might not in all cases lead to unwholesome results as wholesome acts might not in all cases lead to wholesome results?

During meditation i notice that the mind tends to alternate between one-pointedness (breath touching the tip of the nose while breaking off any upcoming thought) and classifying upcoming thoughts into thoughts about the past, future and related to ego, before breaking off the thought, or observing the upcoming and cessation of all sensations in the realm of body and mind while always keeping adhithanna in posture. Is this inconsistent or can a unified and one-pointed mind exist alternately or even simultaneously?

At work, my mother experiences that she is being ignored by most of her co-workers. She feels isolated and sad. What can she do?

If there are no restrictions in Buddhism then why do they not want to get married?

Have experience when notting the thoughts as impermanence disappears the body and thoughts together .But still there's somebody looking at and it goes into a cloudy space. What is this experience?Is it stream winner?

Step 1: Some person causes me pain Step 2: let’s say I stay neutral about pain, pain does not cause me sorrow, and I don’t feel even slightest feelings of ill will towards that person — all because I know pain is impermanent and it is not self Step 3: so at that point, should I take action against this person, as matter of cause and effect - or not - or what would Buddha do in similar circumstances

I often see the word beginning-less in Buddhist readings and on this site but how do I try to understand this concept being the ignorant human being I am? - Is it just a metaphorical way to describe a very long time? - Is it like the saying which came first: the egg or the chicken in which the answer ‘doesn’t matter’ since they’re both here in the now? - Or is it what we experience is an illusion created from our ignorance therefore there is no real beginning. Scientists say our universe is roughly about 13.8 billion years old so there is probably a beginning? I am not accepting they are correct but not denying the fact either. I feel like when people use the word beginning-less, they are using it as an excuse to explain something that is “unexplainable” because how can something be beginning-less?Is it futile to try to grasp this concept? Or if this concept is understandable what can I do to see this?

Do people (monks and/or scholars) have a sense of how old (or relatively old) each sutta is in the Pali canon: i.e. which suttas are considered "earlier" or "later"? If not for individual suttas, how about for whole Nikayas: are some Nikayas viewed as being probably earlier and/or later? If the answer is "yes", is there a reference on this subject suitable for a non-expert ("suitable" meaning "readable" and "not controversial, generally accepted by other experts" and preferably "identifies the evidence on which it bases its conclusions" ... and preferably also translated into English)? How does this (notion of some progressive history of earlier and of later suttas) fit with the [Buddhist councils](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_councils) ? Were different suttas adopted at different councils? The Wikipedia article about the councils gives me the (perhaps wrong) impression that all suttas were recorded in the first council. Do differences arise from when the suttas were transcribed as translated rather than from when they were accepted into the remembered/oral canon? --- [Piya Tan's analysis of DN 30](http://www.themindingcentre.org/dharmafarer/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/36.9-Lakkhana-S-d30-piya.pdf) includes text like the following: > Historically, the Buddha has none of these superhuman marks, but his authenticity and spirituality are in no way diminished or affected. They are at best mythical marks of the fruits of his past good karma, as detailed in the Lakkhaa Sutta (D 30).12 We will now examine how and why these marks arose. > The earliest sources of a full list of the thirty-two marks are the following suttas: ... > Earliest allusions: ... Should I take that as implying that he has a reference that tells him which are the "earliest" suttas? Or is he saying there that all suttas are the earliest source? Taking [this paper](https://www.buddhismuskunde.uni-hamburg.de/pdf/5-personen/analayo/bahudhatuka.pdf) as an example, should I infer that the current state-of-the-art is that some scholars try to decide what's early and late by comparing different versions (e.g. Pali and Chinese) of a sutta: but that though with a lot of work they try that for one sutta, such hasn't been done for most suttas and there's no reference of dates (of specific suttas) nor even generalization (e.g. about Nikayas). I think I've read various people mention other examples too, of topics evolving: for example that earliest suttas talks about fewer than five lay precepts.