I'm a young woman who questions a lot in life. A couple of years ago I started to get this weird feeling as if i wasn't meant to be here. It's hard to describe what i mean by that. It's as if I'm living in a dream 24/7. Not too long after this feeling started I got these weird dreams that felt so real that i woke up with the last feeling i had in my dream. In my dreams I'm a young Asian man (teens to early 20's) and most of the time I'm at some sort of red bridge, but occasionally I'm in a forest. My most recent dream was the forest one. I remember strolling through the forest with a feeling of overwhelming sadness. In this particular dream i get attacked by three men, i think they were wearing black and they had a face cover on the bottom half of their faces. I distinctly remember the feeling of being slashed with some sort of knife of the back of my lower right arm, probably about half way between the elbow and wrist. After that i get attacked more and then my vision goes black and the dream ends. I woke up the day with pain in the same area that was cut in my dream. After this dream I started to remember things, memories that weren't mine... One dream consisted of me as the Asian man hanging out with another Asian man around my age, i don't want to say that we were lovers but it felt that way. I also remember what he looked like, as well as what i looked like. I don't really remember my name or his name, but i have a strong feeling towards a name Junseo, it makes me think that this was at least an alias of my if not my real name. I also feel great anger about the events pertaining my death. I have hopes of reuniting with my lover, even if I'm not longer me. This is the only memory i have of him. I drew myself so that i could remember. That being said i also lived in a trailer as a kid, it was definitely haunted. I would hear footsteps when nobody else was home and i would hear voices talk to me at night while i was in bed. There was a man who would watch me sleep, and the one day he wasn't there a four legged creature jumped at me from the corner of my room. I refused to sleep in my room from that day on and the voices stopped whispering to me at night and i never saw the four legged creature again. If i remember my past life then why are ghosts real? Are ghosts simply people who never got reincarnated or is it deeper than that? I am not a religious person, so i'm simply trying to come up with a logical reason. Is my mind simply playing tricks on me and or am i just insane?

For those Buddhists who believe there is an intermediate state between death and our next rebirth (IIRC this can last anything upto 7 weeks), does the intermediate state *remember* what has happened to it in its last life or is it just spurred on by its traditional lusts/cravings? Suppose someone plotted my death, succeeded, and then laid waste to my orchards, could that (I'd probbaly be mad) be the motive for how I am reborn, rather than my habits? I understand that remembering past lives is not the norm, so I am reclutant to consider it a serious issue, if we believe in rebirth and religious soteriology, rather than the importance of our existential non-religious projects (and I would almost consider it a reductio ad absurdum for the latter).

Is worry about life, body health, e.g. householding, status-maintaining, obstacles for Arahataphala? Is this in accordance with what the Teacher taught? And why is such an obstacle? Would one believing no former, no next life (deny rebirth), not hold either strong on kaya (Sakkaya), worry about life and health, or falls into ideas of "abounding life will be Nibbana, end of suffering"?

my question is astronomical observations and results thereof when applied to humans largely differ from astrological influencing. What Buddhists unlike other religious groups should do to solve the problems?

Is being homosexual a result of poor karma? Or is it because of the person's habit in his/her past life? Or perhaps it's because the person likes and supports same-sex couple in his/her past life?

According to this answer for the question "Does Theravada Buddhism accept Jataka Stories? ": > The Theravada accepts the Jataka stories as commentarial literature; > they are not canonical, but are considered a reliable account by a > learned Buddhist scholar. What are canonical are the verses that > accompany the stories ... > > It's not uncommon for modern Theravada Buddhists to question the > authenticity of the stories, especially given their often fantastical > content. Based on the above, it looks like the stories of the Buddha's past lives from Jataka are merely commentarial, and not canonical. However, I found one possible story of the Buddha's past life as told by him in MN 83 , which is part of the Sutta Pitaka, but outside Jataka. Being part of the Majjhima Nikaya, I take it that this is canonical. It's a story about the just and principled King Makhadeva who started the practice of retiring from the throne at an advanced age to become an ascetic. He practiced the Brahmaviharas, and was reborn after the break-up of the body, after death, in the Brahma realm. He established and passed on this good practice to his descendents who carried on doing it, till King Nimi's son Kaḷārajanaka who stopped this practice. The plot twist is when the Buddha tells Ananda: > And having developed the four Brahmā meditations, when his body broke > up, after death, King Nimi was reborn in a good place, a Brahmā realm. > But King Nimi had a son named Kaḷārajanaka. He didn’t go forth from > the lay life to homelessness. He broke that good practice. He was > their final man. > > Ānanda, you might think: ‘Surely King Makhādeva, by whom that good > practice was founded, must have been someone else at that time?’ But > you should not see it like this. **I myself was King Makhādeva at that > time.** I was the one who founded that good practice, which was kept up > by those who came after. But that good practice doesn’t lead to > disillusionment, fading away, cessation, peace, insight, awakening, > and extinguishment. It only leads as far as rebirth in the Brahmā > realm. But now I have founded a good practice that does lead to > disillusionment, fading away, cessation, peace, insight, awakening, > and extinguishment. And what is that good practice? It is simply this > noble eightfold path, that is: right view, right thought, right > speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right > mindfulness, and right immersion. This is the good practice I have now > founded that leads to disillusionment, fading away, cessation, peace, > insight, awakening, and extinguishment. Ānanda, I say to you: ‘You all > should keep up this good practice that I have founded. Do not be my > final men.’ Whatever generation is current when such good practice is > broken, he is their final man. Ānanda, I say to you: ‘You all should > keep up this good practice that I have founded. Do not be my final > men.’” The Pali version side-by-side with English: > I myself was King Makhādeva at that time. > Ahaṃ tena samayena rājā maghadevo ahosiṃ. > > I was the one who founded that good practice, > Ahaṃ taṃ kalyāṇaṃ vattaṃ nihiniṃ, > mayā taṃ kalyāṇa vattaṃ nihitaṃ; Questions: 1. Is my interpretation correct that the Buddha was King Makhadeva in his past life, based on the Pali version? 2. Are there other such canonical stories of the Buddha's past lives in the Pali Sutta Pitaka, outside of Jataka?

What kind of karma is it that causes people to suddenly go 180 on me when I seem to give 'too much' info about a certain point then they turn against me and give me the 'cold shoulder'? or have excuses to not be near me even if I currently haven't done anything wrong other then open up about myself? Then I regret wishing to be born and I have had dreams that I may have had done bad things to people in the past and went on the run instead of facing my trials as I'm always dreaming I'm escaping the police and often succeed in doing so leading me to think I ran from my crimes and haven't yet faced justice. Is it even possible to have been a dictator in a past life and your put in this as punishment? When I die and go to the 'pearly gates' is a big arrest warrant going to be shown in my face instead how do I retcify this crap and heal myself?

I have been digging really deep into the philosophy of Buddha. What I have come to know is that Buddha has never talked about remembering past lives in any original text. If he has then please let me know. Now, what he may have said is the idea of Dependent Origination, that surely many past actions/events were the cause of his birth. The other thing what I have found is that rebirth in Buddhism is not reincarnation. Keep this in mind. It is the rebirth of consciousness in this life. We go through different perception of the self as long as we cling to desires. Also, sexual desires work vaguely here to change the perception of "I". However, my question is Buddha has never talked about past life as in life about past bodies before physical birth, if he has then please let me know. (Also, I have found that Jataka tales is fabricated because it is post Canon.) All the stories of remembrance of past life is fabricated as well, in my point of view, there is also a story where Buddha remembers past life after enlightenment, but it's wrong. He was just pointing out Dependent Origination. Please let me clarify on this topic. Thank you.

This is a reference request, not a doctrine question. I recall seeing a quote from a Buddhist text or teacher roughly to this effect... - To see your *past* karma, look at your present *body* (and environment). - To see your *future* lives, look at your present *mind*. The closest I can find now from a teacher or text is a quote from Philip Kapleau's *Three Pillars of Zen*... > Thus our present life and circumstances are the products of our past > thoughts and actions, and in the same way our deeds in this life will > fashion our future mode of existence.” (p. 408) ... which is close -- "life and circumstances" vs "body and environment" and "deeds" vs "mind"-- but not quite. If anybody can supply a pointer to the body/environment/mind version, I'd be grateful.

While I do have a personal and intimate belief in reincarnation, I really struggle with the Buddhist belief that we have innumerably many past lives. A monk I listened to explained that all the beings we meet everyday were once our parents in a specific past life, as well as our enemies. Honestly, i find this perspective quite hard to believe. It seems to me that if had so many past lives, we should have reached wisdom and Buddhahood at some point already. How (according to Buddhism) is it possible to have such an accumulation of experience, without reaching some degree of wisdom or enlightenment?

Is there anyone knows and has experience in past life regression? How can I do to recall my past life memory? Thank you.

How could anyone recognize the difference between experiencing a past life recall and simply experiencing a vivid imagining of the mind? While meditating I often slip into states that take me outside my current sense of self and into another experience. Though I don’t believe this to be a past life recall, I often wonder if I experienced this 2000 years ago in Indian society, would I have consider this a past life? Just like past lives can be consider endlessly varied so can these vivid experiences. ---------- It’s seems a typical answer to this question is, either, 1. Your not meditating good enough... or 2.There is no self and hence no past lives. I feel these are insufficient answers. In regards to 1, I think maybe people misunderstand my interpretation of imagining. I do not mean an intentionally based conjuring of thoughts or day dreaming. It is in deep stillness that these conditions arise, taking on the appearance of life experiences, and they appear distinct from my current life situations. In regards to 2, I take non-self or the emptiness of self and things to mean the impermanence of states of being or existing. We are confined to bodies, that is to say, the neurons in my brain control the movement of my thumb typing this. Of course we are socially, biologically, and environmentally interconnected and none of our actions goes uninfluenced by the actions of others as a hole. Yet at the end of the day my bank account number belongs to me and I am legally responsible for my actions within society.

I am riddled by this question lately and it necessary for my progress on path of Dhamma. My question is, why is it that in this life time I have became obsessively bent to attain *nibbana* while everyone around me is living in total oblivion. I mean if I had so many rebirths in past lives exactly what was I doing all these quantillion lives, was I never told the *dhamma*. If I was told, then why am I not already enlightened. Was I dumb or something all these lives not to have awaken to the truth of suffering? What must have been my mistake all these lives? How can I rectify that mistake so that I can felicitate my *nibbana* in this life?

As a child I remembered being born, being in the womb, and the death that preceeded this birth. I recalled the time between the death and the womb. I recalled the act I dying. I recalled the act of taking a blade to my own throat and the process of dying. I still recall many of the things I did which caused suffering in my previous life, but I do not recall those whom I helped, or loved. It is a heavy load to bear. Is there a purpose to this ? Am I meant to work to relieve the same suffering I caused in others ? *** "Danuka Shewantha asked (2018-03-07): If you don’t mind can you explain your experience with us. Are you recalling past life memory?" Being born: Very young I had a recurring nightmare, and it would follow me when I woke up. It was a dream of being huge in a small space and suddenly extremely small in an infinite space. The size of the space I came to realize was being defined by being squeezed from all sides and then the contact disappearing. When all the surface of my skin was in contact with the "squeezing" it felt like I was a giant and the space around me was too small for me, it panicked me, and then when the surface in contact with my skin withdrew I felt myself floating without any sense of being touched -therefore I had no size, it felt like being infinitely small in an infinitely large space. This felt like relief. This is what I later came to understand (perhaps wrongly, but it felt correct), as the memory of being born. The squeezing of the uterus against me, and then, when the contraction subsided, the feeling of the liquid around and no contact. When I was young I asked other children if they had the same nightmare and several told me they had it too. The memory of it seems to fade, like all nightmares. My suicide: One day a friend of one of my aunts, in a (very successful) effort to endear himself gave me a present for Easter (I was raised in a Catholic home). It was a huge rabbit standing like a person. It was wearing clothes like a person (a blazer and short pants). He was taller than I was. I would have been maybe 6 (?), not much older (we moved from that house when I was 7), but maybe younger. The rabbit was upstairs, there was a downstairs play area in this house. There was a moment when everything went black (no sight memory, just missing time). Then I felt like I was in a different place. I ran to the kitchen and in the utensil drawer I dug through the knives. I looked at them and kept touching them to find the one my hand remembered. I chose a short knife with a wooden handle. The knife had been washed so much the wood was rough, but it had once been smooth, the wood felt weathered, like the outside wood of an unpainted house. The surface changed by the rain. The blade of the knife had been sharpened many times on a stone. It was a knife my mother used in the vegetable garden, so my father sharpened it regularly because it was often made dull by the labour. I recall the blade shape, but I don't know how to describe it. I recall the knife as clearly as if it were before me now. I can see the lines from the sharpening reflecting light, the colour of the handle. The small rivets that held the wood to the blade were blackened. I held the knife in my hand, the butt of the handle against the middle of my palm. I knew the knife as familiar in that moment because of the place the handle fit into my palm, the length of it. It was "correct". I ran downstairs with the knife. I leaned the rabbit against a door frame to hold it vertical. Standing in front of it I looked for the place in its neck, and I sliced into it with the knife. At that moment everything went black. I felt myself different. I felt my right arm, pressed against my body, reaching for my neck on the left side, and the knife in my hand. I felt the tip of the blade against my skin. I felt the moment before the blade cut into my flesh as the blade pushed, and then the moment the skin broke. The flood of heat of my blood flowing from the wound. I felt the heat of the blood as it poured over my skin. I felt the pushing, pulsing of my heart, beating loud, and the increasing heat of the blood as my skin became cold. It (felt as though) it burned my skin. I felt everything. My eardrums hurt as though there was such a huge silence my heartbeat was crushingly loud. The memory continues from that, but I don't know if you really want to know what happened afterwards. It was quite horrible. Before birth: I recalled from that event forward and being sent into the womb. I recalled that someone/something sent me, like being pushed by a voice. As though the voice were wind and I was dust. There were many voices, not all agreed with my birth. Someone advocated for me. I did not have voice. I did not speak, I listened, involved, but not desirous (not against either) the outcome. when the vision broke I awakened on the ground, next to the now 'dead' rabbit, the small styrofoam pellets all over the floor. I could not explain to my mother why I had destroyed such a lovely gift which I loved so much. She thought it ungrateful of me. Which it was, in many ways. There are many other such moments. I recall being widowed (that pain is still searing now). I recalled my attachment to wealth and what I did to amass it. I recall the pain I brought to others through my actions, and I recall their blaming me for their suffering. I have met many of them in my life now, and I see them act on the experiences we shared. I see them continue to struggle with the experiences, but they don't seem to recall them. They are just blindly acting on the pain. Some I have helped, but many are living in a fog. It is very like watching a person you knew as a child and knowing the reasons for their current actions is their past experience. *** "Sankha Kulathantille asked (2018-03-08): Do you remember the names of your parents in the past life or at least the place they stayed? That is an interesting question, I never wondered about the names of parents. I chastised myself severly for not recalling the names of my children, but parents never occured to me. I recall young being very upset to be called by the name which I was given. I could not understand why they called me that and it upset me greatly. I knew it wasn't my name and I concentrated very hard to recall my real name. The name I have now is Michele, and when I focused I could recall my name as something very different that I had never heard before. It was something like Mishcoot. I tried to reason with myself that the first part of the name sounded like the first part of this name and it should not be so important. I cried myself to sleep and each time my name bothered me I reminded myself it was not so different. I am still uncomfortable with my name and I avoid its use as much as I can. I try not to think about what I lost. "My name" now is not mine, it is just what people call me. I know when I hear it that I am being addressed, but I feel no attachment to it. It could just as easily be a sound like a whistle or a grunt. Where: (very young) I cried inconsolably at the sight of Jewish cemeteries and when asked I explained I could not be buried on sacred ground. I was raised Roman Catholic in a homogenous area, and had never met anyone Jewish at that time. When I was first in school and learning letters I kept insisting that they also had a numeric value and words could be added. Frustrated teachers insisted I was wrong and to stop insisting. It would be decades before I learned that Hebrew does this. The first time I traveled to NYC (New York city USA) I knew where things were without maps or street names. I ran down a street and closed my eyes as I reached a street corner. With eyes closed I (gleefully) lifted my left arm and pointed. With eyes still closed I said "Grand Central Station" and when I opened my eyes it was there. It wasn't a surprise, it just was where I knew it would be. I continued this game that first day, and then I just settled into the familiarity. It was very pleasant, and it felt safer there than anywhere else. Like a well loved child in their familial space.

I can understand how the Buddha and various arhats and the like can surmise the existence of past lives and rebirth. What I dont see is how they come up with actual numbers of times they have been reborn and the total number of times anyone is and how long the universe has been contracting and expanding and things like that? At some point isn't that delving into the unknowable?

I seem to be making rather unusual choices in my life for unknown reasons. Like on a mere hunch or for some reason I gain interest in a strange topic. And later it turns out that these choices were exactly what I needed to have done to prepare for things that eventually happened. Is this addressed in the dharma? I make no claims about psychic powers or anything like that - I just wonder if it is merely coincidence.

The title says it all. Why does all the recollections of past lifes of Buddha revolves around times of kings which were similar to the time the Buddha was living. Why aren't there any mention of times that are similar to the times of what we are living right now ? does this mean this is the 1st time in the sansara that we are living in a world like this ? if it is the 1st time, that we are living in a world like this with so many technological advances, that would mean we are living in sansara which is not repeating, which in turns mean that new things can happen in the sansara. then how can we be even sure about enlightenment. if sansara can change what is to say that some day all beings that achieved nibbana will not again be reborn?

Some people are more richer other others, some are more intelligent than others, some are more beautiful than others... Are all these predestined? I heard that one's karma in his/her past life affects his/her present life. So if one is not as intelligent/sucessful in the present life, can we attribute this to his/her bad karma in the past life?

I always thought that the remembrance of the past lives and the vision of the mechanism of the kamma were the fruits of the jhanas. BUT, it is said that the Tathagata learnt the (8) jhanas from two teachers. it is also said that he remembered his past lives during the famous seven days, after he decided to gain what he would call nibbana. Do we know whether the Tathagata had access to his previous lives or to the karmic mechanism before the week of accessing nibbana ? if no, does this mean that only the dhamma --- instead of the practice from hinduism, jainism and perhaps others doctrines --- permits to see the past lives, or the karmic mechanism ?

So lets take all humans currently alive in the human world. They all have the karma to be reborn in this realm. Computers exist in our world, and in some places (Not all) public libraries provide them and access to them / the internet. Are there cases where karma would prevent someone from using a computer? Say even that one was right in front of them, would karmic forces prevent them from using it? Could karmic forces prevent them from touching it? Like say, if you tried to give to someone that had a lot of karma from stealing in a previous life. Would it be possible? Or would events always unfold that prevent you from giving in some way or another? What I am trying to ask is if karma can make events that seem possible conventionally (IE Hand someone a 20$ bill) be impossible in practice.