The 8th precept in vipassana says to abstain from using high or luxurious beds. Should I sleep on the floor not on bed ?

I'm trying to follow Buddhist teachings but I generally don't like people so I don't feel like practising metta towards them. They just irritate me and I don't care if they suffer or not. I usually just want them to F off and leave me alone. How can I be Buddhist if I feel this way? I cannot force a warm fuzzy feeling of metta.

Looking up the word [samsara](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/samsara) , or the [Wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%E1%B9%83s%C4%81ra_(Buddhism)) leads to the same definition you see most places: > The endless cycle of birth, existence and death. However, that is a lot of concept to pack into one word. How did they arrive at the word "samsara" to encapsulate such a complex concept? [Etymonline says](https://www.etymonline.com/word/samsara) : > "endless cycle of death and rebirth, transmigration of souls," 1886, from Sanskrit samsara "a wandering through," from sam-, prefix denoting completeness (from PIE root *sem- (1) "one; as one, together with"), + sr- "to run, glide" (from PIE verbal stem *ser- "to flow;" see serum). But I don't know how I feel about PIE yet, not sure how they arrive at these derivations. _Tangential question: it says 1886 is the latest definition, when does the word first get used?_ If I were to go with etymonline's derivation, of sem and serum, it is the "one flow" basically, being one with the flow, being tied to the flow. But I don't know if that is a correct interpretation. But the main question is, what do the components of the word mean. Is there any Buddhist text that elaborates on this concept and ties it back to the word more deeply? If so, what text is it and/or what do they generally say?

Stream entry feels like a milestone where some very significant things happen and the practitioner cannot slide backwards from it. Do Zen sutras describe the concept of stream entry by that or any other name?

I have some friends who are Christian that I can't avoid the subject with. We used to see each other very often for some events. Normally those are friends of friends. Examples of the unpleasant feedback I commonly receive include things like "Buddha is Satan", "Buddha is in hell" and "All Buddhist shall go to hell". There are many other examples and by - for example - searching YouTube, you'll find more than enough examples. I am looking for some efficient and effective response to avoid this unfruitful conversation and prevent more unpleasant conversation that won't benefit anyone. It's better to have a compassionate discussions instead. Below are some responses that I came up with: 1. Oh my God? So far Buddha didn't do me any harm me yet. I will be taking extra precautions for this. Thanks for the concern. 2. Oh my God? My understanding, based on personally hearing the story from both sides, is that roughly 80% of the teachings of Christianity have a counterpart in Buddhism which has a similar interpretation. How come Satan is teaching the same morals as God? 3. Oh my God? Where in the Bible is it written so? 4. I felt hurt that you say Buddha is Satan. In a few cases they will insist to talk on this and ignore my feeling. Not sure they feel righteous to say so on their side? 5. Oh my God. Can I excuse myself to wash room for some emergency? If talk again and go again. Post notes: Thanks guys, there is a chat discussion regarding this with another Christian. If you are interested, let me know and I will add you. I do respect Jesus and Buddha a lot and I hope there is no comment that leads to a battlefield. I will keep my sincere prayers for forgiveness from Jesus and others too if there is unpleasant feeling to others too due to this questions. Really sorry folks.

In my years of meditation practice, I have both experienced time contracting (appearing to pass at great speed) or dilating and seeming to come to a near standstill. I begin my meditation practice by relaxing and following the breath. As this settles, respiration becomes very slow. During this slowing of breath, the awareness of the heartbeat becomes more prominent, and it also appears to slow down to where the heart's contraction seems to occur in slow motion. I can feel/witness the contraction and sense (or imagine I am sensing) the opening and closing of heart valves. There is no striving or effort to do this, it is occurring along with the awareness of the rest of the body. What I find unusual and have not been able to explain is that I am wearing an iWatch during this to record my mediation, and it shows that during these super relaxed periods when I am consciousness and experiencing a slowing of time and heartbeat, the iWatch is measuring an increase in heart rate! The HRV can get rather wonky and large as well. This perception of space and time becoming distorted (I meditate mostly with eyes open) seems to occur more often the more I practice. After deep retreats, the phenomena can lead to strange occurrences around feeling or seeing future and past events as converging or simultaneously occurring. This recent article https://boingboing.net/2022/08/17/is-precognition-real.html aligns with what I have experienced about these time distortions. The characteristics and phenomena that enhance precognition seem to relate to deep meditative practice. What have you experienced in your practice around time and space distortion, and has this led to any precognition experiences, as mentioned in this article? What does the Buddhist philosophy in different traditions say about time itself? Does time exist? If so, how do we experientially know this? There appears just to be a never-ending change of state. Here and now seems always to be here and now, although how spacious that here and now "feels" does change.

Is it important to have a traditional understanding of Buddhism or is avoiding so called "heresies" enough to make sure you are not distorting, undermining etc., the dharma? Take the idea of an afterlife. > Religious and spiritual traditions throughout history have explained that death is not the end of life but that some part of us, perhaps all of us, somehow carries on. > Buddhism is no exception to this. It is undeniable that the historical Buddha accepted the idea of rebirth. He spoke of rebirth and frequently described, sometimes in considerable detail, how actions committed in this life determine the form of existence in a future world. He also spoke of enlightenment in terms of how many times one must be reborn before one will be freed from the cycle of birth and death. Although there are instances in his discourses (the Kalamasutta, for example) where he says that the practice of dharma is meaningful, whether you believe in a hereafter or not, the overwhelming mass of evidence does not suggest that he held an agnostic position himself. https://tricycle.org/magazine/rebirth-case-buddhist-agnosticism/ I personally believe that we do experience the karmic result of this life, and that the next life is impermanent, illusory, but for whatever reason (mostly that accounts of past lives don't convince me) I don't think anyone experiences full rebirth as a new life. This is not traditional Buddhism. But as far as I know it is still a form of Buddhism and not a heresy. This is not Ucchedavada or the Senika heresy, I think, despite seeming possibly like either. To an extent, it doesn't matter at all if you're not part of a church or pushing your idiosyncratic beliefs down anyone's throat, but is it dangerous, for you or anyone else?

In the Noble Eight Fold path, the practices which are said to be done often have a suffix of 'right' to them. My question is, on what basis is this 'right' found? Could a logical explanation be given?

When becoming a monk one has to give up most worldly stuff. I have saved hundreds of Buddhist PDF files and on my Kindle app I have bought all of Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhis books (translations on the Pali canon) so I can use those when becoming a monk and having to learn and study the Dhamma. What if I purchase myself an iPad before becoming a monk - can I then use that iPad with my books after I become a monk? If not, then how should one get access to the Dhamma?

Why is it that Buddhism never compiled a reasonably concise set of canonical texts like the Bible? Buddhism itself has universal beliefs such as the 4 Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path and the notion of going for refuge. To me then it doesn't seem unreasonable that there could have been a Buddhist Bible that complied these central beliefs in the same way as the Christian Bible. Even though the Christian world is diverse they still manage with one Bible (though I do appreciate there are different version such as the Orthodox Bible) and this Bible forms the basis of new forms of Christianity or new emphasis on Christian belief. However Buddhism seems to have an enormous array of texts over a number of different canons (Pali, Chinese, Tibetan) and commentaries and para canonical texts. Why the difference? Is there something in the history or culture of these two religions that caused them to treat their texts differently. Am I wrong and the differences aren't really there if you look at it correctly? Is it a theological matter? I appreciate you could ask the same question about Islam and Hinduism (I think) but I want to keep the question as on-topic and tractable as possible.

Yesterday I saw in a funeral banner the following statement. > Rupam Jirati Machanam, Nama Gottam Najirathi It means, "the body decays but the Name and the Tribe does not". But I have concerns on this. The first part of the statement is valid but however the second part doesn't for me. If everything decays/dies then how is the name and tribe doesn't? For me this is clearly a misinterpretation and destroys the whole base of the Buddha's teachings. I also found this article on this topic as well: - The Common misinterpretations of a Pali Verse that states the body decays but the Name and the Tribe does not Is there any Tripitaka source to this statement? or anything similar? Where can I find it?

In this answer, it is suggested that space between thoughts, less discursive mental activity, is related to relaxation and concentration. I know it is not advised to judge one's inner experience too much during meditation, and that inhibiting thoughts intentionally is not recommended, but would it be right to say that a period wherein thoughts are more infrequent signifies a calmer mind? Does the diminution of thoughts correlate with calmness?

I've been reading/studying E F Shumacher's *A Guide for the Perplexed*, a philosophical book about the nature of knowledge and our capacity for understanding the world, especially in relation to "higher" and "lower" processes of humanity, (IE, prayer or meditation vs hunger or fear) and I'm hoping a Buddhist perspective can help me to understand one aspect of it better. In it, he refers to self-awareness as the level of human existence that is activated or discovered by mindfulness-meditation, by dismissing the thoughts that come from the level of consciousness. He says that self-awareness produces insights rather than thoughts. Shumacher was a Catholic at the time of writing this, but I understand that he studied and was influenced heavily by Buddhism, and I believe that is where his ideas about thought come from. I am not a Buddhist, though I have tried meditation. An idea that I have struggled with in all of this is the definition of thought. I have always considered the processes by which one would analyze or dismiss a thought to also be thinking. I would consider an insight to be a type of thought, not something higher than a thought. I am now struggling to understand whether I simply have too broad of a definition for thought, or am simply so philosophically-challenged that I have never experienced this process-above-thought discussed by Shumacher and Buddhism. Can you help me understand what the Buddhist definition of a "thought" is? Do you have a different word for the process by which one would dismiss a thought or analyze a thought while meditating? Everything beyond this point is my own speculation on the subject, for clarity or analysis. If you already understand my problem or misunderstanding, feel free to skip it. I have wondered if Freud's ego and super-ego may shed light on this. I would say that "thought" is the word used to describe the processes of both the ego and super-ego, but I wonder if Shumacher and Buddhism would consider "thought" to be what the ego does, and perhaps have a different word for the processes of the super-ego. I have also imagined, as Shumacher does in his book, the human being as a programmer and computer. (The programmer being the self and the computer being the human brain) The human computer carries out all the day-to-day activities we do without higher thought, while the human programmer directs the computer and programs it so that it behaves as desired. In this analogy, I would consider all communication between the "computer" and "programmer" to be thought, but I wonder if Shumacher and Buddhism considers thought to be information passed from the computer to the programmer, while directions passed from the programmer to the computer is something else. I have included the translation tag, as I suspect my answer may largely pivot on the translation of the word "thought" from Buddhist texts into English, and whether there is a more thorough translation of it that could explain this.

I wonder in how far the burning of human corpses in the open is still a thing? Ideally looking for a place where there are always burnings and corpses and mourning. Heard it's suitable from the Dhutanga chapter of the Visuddhimagga : > Even in sleep the dweller in a charnel ground shows naught Of negligence, for death is ever present to his thought; He may be sure there is no lust after sense pleasure preys Upon his mind, with many corpses present to his gaze. Rightly he strives because he gains a sense of urgency, While in his search for final peace he curbs all vanity. Let him that feels a leaning to Nibbána in his heart Embrace this practice for it has rare virtues to impart

Will someone explain Bhavanga and Javana in simple way? At times, they seem non-comprehensible.

I am [rereading this answer](https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/a/47512/23920) and I am confused by the quote: >when this exists - that exists. Arising of this leads to arising of that. When this doesn't exist - that doesn't exist. Cessation of this leads to cessation of that. Let's suppose this is true, and let's consider an event X. By the statement, we should be able to find an event Y which caused X. Similarly for Y till ad infinitum. I think it is reasonable to assume that if we have a set of events in the present X_1,X_2,X_3..., when we repeat this process , all of their "root events" will start to become the same because things happen in context of each other. For example, I give my friend 5 dollars, then I also lose 5 dollars, now going back a step would go into the event of how the thought of me giving my friend 5 dollars came into our mind or my mind. Now, we apply extrapolate this idea through all events in the present, then it would be that they're all rooted at a very small set of events. And if one is to yet to apply the claim again, it maybe that all these events are caused by the same event. So, what would be these fundamental events which led the universe into motion according to buddhism?

I'm looking for translations of the Dhammapada that are freely available to quote in part or in full. I would like a variety of alternative translation so can anyone give a comprehensive list - online and/or printed publications. Many Thanks

I'm looking for a collection of the entire Dhammapada in Ebook format (not PDF-format) that can be read in the Kindle App. Free or paid. I've been looking myself without finding anything. Maybe someone else has better luck than me. The book has to contain all Dhammapada verses. Thanks.

The following quote can be found at this link: > On the farmer's arrival the Buddha ordered that some food should be given him, and when the man was comforted and his mind was ready the Buddha preached a sermon, at the end of which the man became a Sotāpanna (DhA.iii.262-3). I'm interested in finding out what **"DhA.iii.262-3"** means. I looked up the Dhammapada Verse 262-263 and they are about something else entirely. Screenshot of these verses are attached. So where is the above story found in the Sutta Pitaka?

I've seen this glossary entry in a couple of places: *Hīnayāna: “Inferior Vehicle,” a pejorative term, coined by a group who called themselves followers of the Mahāyāna, the “Great Vehicle,” to denote the path of practice of those who aimed at Arahantship, rather than full Buddhahood. Hīnayānists refused to recognize the later discourses, composed by the Mahāyānists, that claimed to contain teachings that the Buddha felt were too deep for his first generation of disciples, and which he thus **secretly entrusted to underground serpents**. The Theravāda school of today is a descendent of the Hīnayāna.* Does anyone know where this claim about the origin of Mahāyāna texts comes from?