Please give a clear simple example of how this looks in a practical way without quoting suttas. I just want a practical example. Thanks > The object of consciousness, or mind-object, that arises has to be of > ultimate reality, not conventional reality. We must be able to > differentiate between what is absolute reality, or paramattha dhamma > and what is conventional reality, or sammuti.

I wonder if Buddhism has a concept or teaching surrounding what is happening in my personal practice right now. In my practice right now I want to reduce my focus on things that are certain. It's certain that I am typing on my phone right now, and breathing in. Then a idea pops up of something relating to the future, and I recognize the uncertainty around any theories surrounding the future. Earlier I came up with theories about craving and other things, and recognized the uncertainty of any such theories. I had many theories about how the mind works in the past but now I see the uncertainty in these theories. I try to synthesize insights based on what I learned from Buddhism but I'm uncertain of the theories in the end. Those mind theories I have are impermanent too, always changing and coming up with a new theory. But now the only certainty is my thumbs hitting my phone. Then a craving pops up and I'm led away from the certainty of breathing. Is there anything surrounding certainty or uncertainty in Buddhism being taught?

I am basically an undergraduate Student in a university in Asia. My classes started in the month of August 2025. Now before coming to college, I made my mind in such a way that I decided that I will not speak with others, but instead if anyone asks me anything, then I will reply. But after coming to the college, my friends are repeatedly trying to speak with me and want to make me their friends. But I really don't want that. Not only the friends, but also the teachers of the university are also disturbing me repeatedly. I basically don't want to take the help of others, but the teachers are repeatedly asking me that if you have any questions then please ask. I want to stay alone and silent. But the environment is not permitting to do that. Every time someone is always available to disturb me. Please guide me how to get rid of these things. I want to know: How can I control myself?

I find it reassuring to be able to turn to the pali suttas for answers. I happened across comments by users that disparage against turning to the suttas for answers, one describing how it makes one come off as "Buddha's teacher's pet". Some amount of ego-hurt, but also genuine curiousity, makes me question if turning to the suttas for advice and certainty could be counter to reaching attainments. Would appreciate any perspective.

A sports article says this > Do you want to take first place in an upcoming triathlon? Want to > break your personal record in swimming laps? Want to be faster than > your best friend in the pool? Whatever it is you want, visualize > yourself accomplishing it. Would buddhism condone such visualization of success?

Dependent origination is interpreted by users of this platform to mean that craving and grasping can give rise to a sense of self. It's also advised on this platform to reflect on not-self of various things like mind and body. Not-self is described elsewhere as "not in control of", although people caution against conceptualizing not-self. I take this to mean that whenever I feel I "am", that "I" is an illusion built on a layer of craving and grasping. So, whenever I feel I "am", I reflect on an inability of me as an illusion to change anything - to move a body part, to breathe in a different way, to change thoughts, to prevent something, etc. Is this a wrong view?

So far I learned the following methods, derived from the pali suttas , to bring an end to defilements via cognitive behavior: - contemplating on thoughts of pleasure, cruelty and ill will, in respect to them leading to suffering for self, others and both (example MN 19 ) > “As I abided thus, diligent, ardent, and resolute, a thought of > sensual desire arose in me. I understood thus: ‘This thought of > sensual desire has arisen in me. This leads to my own affliction, to > others’ affliction, and to the affliction of both; it obstructs > wisdom, causes difficulties, and leads away from Nibbāna.’ When I > considered: ‘This leads to my own affliction,’ it subsided in me;... - observation of the Nidanas, like how contact of senses with things gives rise of consciousness and attention, which gives rise to pleasant or unpleasant or neither pleasant nor unpleasant feelings, which can lead us to crave, which can lead to grasping and so on (example SN 12.2 and DN 15 ) > So: name and form are requirements for consciousness. Consciousness is > a requirement for name and form. Name and form are requirements for > contact. Contact is a requirement for feeling. Feeling is a > requirement for craving. Craving is a requirement for grasping. > Grasping is a requirement for continued existence. Continued existence > is a requirement for rebirth. Rebirth is a requirement for old age and > death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness, and distress to come to be. > That is how this entire mass of suffering originates. - mindfulness of breath (MN 118 ) > Bhikkhus, when mindfulness of breathing is developed and cultivated, > it is of great fruit and great benefit. When mindfulness of breathing > is developed and cultivated, it fulfils the four foundations of > mindfulness. When the four foundations of mindfulness are developed > and cultivated, they fulfil the seven enlightenment factors. When the > seven enlightenment factors are developed and cultivated, they fulfil > true knowledge and deliverance. What other cognitive behavioral shifts can be learned from the pali suttas? Feel free to correct me or suggest improvements to the descriptions above in the comments

When you meditate with ADHD, the difficulty level of life drops a lot. If you then practice the noble eightfold path in order to come closer to nibbana, you're sort of doing that on a wheelchair. If you stop meditating, ADHD will come back full force, and you still have 0 experience of being on the noble eightfold path on that difficulty level. Could meditating be a hindrance toward enlightenment, for that reason? Aren't you making it too easy for yourself?

I currently try to get better at returning focus and attention from thoughts to breathe. I do this in daily life. I would appreciate if there were suttas on focusing on breathe in daily life outside meditation. I would see it as encouragement. I know that the Buddha focuses a lot on craving and ill wishes and cruel thoughts. These things helped me a lot, they help to return to breathe. Then there is a sort of lightness, as opposed to the heaviness of suffering. I identify a shifting of focus from thoughts to breath as a victory of having applied Buddha's teaching. Unfortunately, I don't have clear wording of the Buddha that this is a sign of cessation on suffering. I'm like a son that needs validation. Are there suttas that talk about breath, as opposed to just talking about contemplating on thoughts?

Hello Beautiful People, I have a quick question. After years of meditating with a mixture of Mahasi and Goenka style, I would like to ask the following. Very often when I sit to mediate, it is a matter of seconds to experience a subtle sense of pleasure and/or spaciousness. But more interestingly, is that after meditating a bit more there comes a feeling that my eyes want to move upwards, almost like if they want to see behind my head/brain. The first times this eye movement happened, years ago, there was fear in me because this was unusual and unexpected - it was even a bit painful. But after letting this movement happen I realized that the traditional lights, pleasure, and spaciousness became more present. Sometimes this leads to a very focalized pleasure spot at the top of my head and sometimes to the feeling that from that spot a very strong and interesting sense of pleasure would come from it (like if there is a cascade of pleasure emanating from the top of my head). The eye movement I am describing is not like REM. It is rather slow and it is directed upwards. So, I guess my question is: what is this eye movement thing? Is it anywhere described? Is it a Jhana thing? a symptom of any stage of the path? Thanks!

I know that there are several stories of monks and nuns leaving behind their families and even young children. However, how realistic is it to live among people and detach from them while in that environment? Also, all the stories of monks/nuns leaving behind their children stem from sayings/religious text. How realistic is it in general to overcome attachment to people? As answers, anecdotes would suffice

We can focus on thoughts or lay attention on them. It is advised not to do that. Why should there be a return of focus on breathe, or current action, or the like? Why should we not pay prolonged attention to thoughts?

In my personal practice, I've come to see that the inner voice craving for external things can be acknowledged and contemplated on, and ultimately stilled. The result is that entanglement with the external world is minimized. I'm trying to be more mindful of this internal voice, and I'm trying to improve my contemplation, so I try to understand more things in Buddhism. One thing I do not understand, is the big importance attributed to dependent origination and the 12 Nidanas. I do not understand why the Buddha goes into such depth explaining sense organs and sense objects and contact, and the like. Contact of cocaine with nose causes a sensation that you can come to crave, thus resulting in suffering. I'd also say that I was relatively clear on things being interdependent. You get good grades if and only if you study well. Hoping someone can give me a hint to how I could gain any value from the 12 Nidanas.

I've been going down a rabbit hole trying to understand the core logic of the early Buddhist path from a materialistic/agnostic standpoint, and I've arrived at a conclusion that feels both insightful and perhaps overly simplistic. I wanted to lay out my line of reasoning and see what you all think. My line of thought goes like this: The Goal is Nibbāna: The ultimate goal is the cessation of dukkha (suffering/dissatisfaction) and the end of the cycle of rebirth. Nibbāna and Annihilation: From an outside, secular perspective, Parinibbāna (the final Nibbāna after an enlightened being's death) looks like annihilation. The impermanent aggregation that an atheist/agnostic perceives as the "self" is gone and does not reappear. This taps into our deepest primal fear. The Doctrinal Solution is Anattā: The Buddha's core teaching to resolve this is Anattā (Not-Self). The argument is that it can't be annihilation because there was no permanent, solid "self" to be annihilated in the first place. What we are is an impermanent "congregation" of processes. The Training is Realizing Anattā: The entire meditative training, at its core, is about deconstructing our own experience to see this truth for ourselves—to move from intellectually accepting Anattā to directly realizing it. The Paradox for Both Believers and Atheists This creates an interesting situation. For a person who believes in rebirth, the ultimate goal of non-rebirth can seem frightening. Their instinct is often to desire a better rebirth, not an end to existence altogether. Conversely, for an atheist who already believes there is nothing after death, it might seem like they've already achieved the Buddhist goal of "no rebirth." However, the crucial distinction is psychological. The atheist may still fear the end of their existence out of instinct, while an enlightened person would meet that same end with equanimity. Therefore, for both the believer afraid of cessation and the non-believer afraid of their own mortality, the Buddhist meditative training serves as a tool to become psychologically at peace with the end of the process we call a "self." This leads me to my core idea: Is the entire project of Early Buddhism (and practices like the Thai Forest tradition) essentially just psychological engineering designed to solve the problem of death anxiety? It feels like the fear of personal annihilation is the "final boss" of human suffering, and the doctrine of Anattā is the specific weapon designed to defeat it. By training the mind to see through the illusion of the very "self" we're afraid of losing, the therapy is complete, and the fear is uprooted. I realize this might be a reductionist take. I'm curious how this framing sits with you all. Is this a fair, if incomplete, way to look at the central mechanism of the path? Or does putting too much emphasis on the "death" aspect miss the point entirely? Looking forward to your thoughts.

It's a bit weird to explain. In daily life when I notice some though or emotion or when someone praises me or some other similar action and I notice that and don't cling on to it there is a inner voice praising myself for not getting attached. And if I "let that go" then again an inner voice praising that action and not getting attached to that feeling and this kind of creates a loop. It might sounds very weird or trivial but sometimes its very annoying. How should one deal with this? Just ignore it?

For a long time I've been really into the space of longevity, both radical lifespan extension through biotechnology and the optimization of quality of life during old age (healthspan extension) through currently available protocols on diet, exercise, sleep, meditation, etc. I'm really interested in the Buddhist perspective on this movement, especially how different schools (Thai Forest, Soto Zen, Plum Village, IMS/IMC, Chinese Chan, Chinese Pure Land, Tibetan Vajrayana, and Sri Lanka Theravada) might perceive it differently. My #1 core value is to live as long and healthy as possible, both physically and mentally. I got into Buddhism, because it seems like a comprehensive and effective framework in supporting individuals' mental well-being, especially during old age. I think that if you are not going to have any children, then you have to embrace some kind of spirituality system to offset the very real and catastrophic effects of loneliness and stress on your health and lifespan. Your mind won't be kind to yourself as you get older, and you have to love something other than yourself to be sane. Which Buddhist tradition do you think is the most compatible with this very new kind of value (life is good and I wanna live as long and healthy as possible) that has emerged in a community only very recently, thanks to technology and urban life enabling such a person? (r/longevity, r/peterattia, and r/Biohackers) Thai Forest, Soto Zen, Plum Village, IMS/IMC, Chinese Chan, Chinese Pure Land, Tibetan Vajrayana, and Sri Lanka Theravada? I know some aspects of Buddhist philosophy are very much contradictory to this goal (think The Five Remembrances in Buddhism, contemplations on impermanence: that we will grow old, that we will get sick, that we will die, that all that is dear to us will change and we will be separated from it, and that our actions are our only true belongings, and we will inherit their consequences). So one of my concerns is that if I'm practicing with a tradition that emphasizes those aspects, it would eventually lead to cognitive dissonance/internal conflicts, creating additional stressors in my life. I know I tend to get very hysterical/neurotic and compulsive about these things, so it's good to give these extra thoughts to it before deciding.

I read that the Buddha said this: Whatever your personal experience tells you is helpful, is more important than the Buddha's teachings. Did he really say that, and if so where?

Thoughts about mine and things should be in this way,about children ,husband and relatives,it's the personality view. That is developed in our own mind.so we inflicted our own wounds. So we were in our own prison. So when this thinking stops personality view has destroyed. Isn't it?

Until now I thought that Buddhism teaches that a sense of self is bad in all cases. Now I read that developing a sense of self around good actions can increase motivation for our spiritual development, and that we can choose to see 'not self' in bad past actions, and see 'self' in beneficial past actions. From this I gather that it could be beneficial to develop a sense of self. In my practice I don't really have a sense of self around good deeds yet. In general I don't really have much of a sense of self, perhaps low self esteem. Should this change? Does Buddhism encourage a sense of self around skillful actions to be developed?

There is no permanent unchanging self. Are past actions therefore "not self"? In my practice I find that seeing past actions as not self allows me to contemplate on them better.