Tuesday, October 6, 2026

Buddhist love at first sight: WHY? šŸ˜šŸ’˜


Have we met before? | Seven signs of a past-life connection


(Buddha's Wisdom) šŸ” WHY DO SOME STRANGERS INSTANTLY FEEL LIKE FAMILY? What are the signs we have known someone in a past life? And what does Buddhism actually teach about these karmic connections?


This video examines seven experiences often linked to past-life (what non-Buddhist traditions call "reincarnation") relationships, from instant trust and unexplained recognition to recurring conflict and shared spiritual growth.


Through ancient Buddhist texts, traditional stories, disputed past-life cases, meditation teachings, and modern memory research, let's explore Buddhist rebirth without assuming that the oversimplification that a "permanent soul" (atta or atman) is traveling from one life to another. That is what is happening, conventionally speaking but, ultimately, it is a pernicious wrong view.

  • What are the OBSTACLES to progress in serenity, meditation, insight, and enlightenment? The Five Hindrances: affection (lust, attachment, passion, clinging), aversion, restlessness, fatigue, doubt.

DISCOVER
  1. Seven signs that may make someone feel strangely familiar
  2. Why the strange old couple greeted the Buddha as if he were their long-lost son
  3. The reported recognition of the 14th Dalai Lama and the case of Swarnlata Mishra
  4. Why the Buddha said "a being who has not [already] been your mother is not easy to find"
  5. The Jātaka Birth Story about the couple who raised the Buddha for 1,500 births
  6. Why guided past-life regression is not the Buddhist method of recalling previous lives
  7. The Buddha’s overlooked second explanation for why two people feel drawn together
  • NOTE: The Sāketa couple (Nakula-mata and Nakula-pita)'s first meeting and the rival wives come from commentarial literature written centuries after the Buddha, drawing on older oral tradition. This video presents them as the tradition tells them, not as verified history.

TIMESTAMPS
  • 00:00 The couple who called the Buddha “son” (Nakula-pita and Nakula-mata Gahapati)
  • 02:09 When a stranger feels like family
  • 06:36 The ones who came back
  • 12:57 Can meditation show you?
  • 17:38 The second explanation

šŸ“š SOURCES AND FURTHER READING (affiliate links)
Primary texts:
Modern cases and research:
  • Ian Stevenson, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation
  • Morey Bernstein, The Search for Bridey Murphy
  • Scoboria et al. (2017), "A mega-analysis of memory reports from eight peer-reviewed false memory implantation studies," Memory
  • John F. Kihlstrom, “Hypnosis, Delayed Recall, and the Principles of Memory”
šŸ“æ Which sign brought someone to mind...and what actually happened? Leave more than a number. What moment that made you think of the person? Join community: Instagram: buddhaswizdom. Facebook: buddhaswizdom. X: https://x.com/BuddhasWizdom. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ndnBU5... TikTok: buddhas.wisdom.

Support the channel: buymeacoffee.com/buddhaswisdom, paypal.me/buddhaswisdom. šŸ™ Subscribe for more of the stories behind Buddhism’s most familiar ideas. #Buddhism #PastLife #PastLives #Rebirth #Karma #PastLifeConnection #BuddhasWisdom #KarmicConnections #Meditation
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'Monstrous BITCH: Terrifying Women' ♀️


Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women

What's a "bitch" anyway?
Columbia University Prof. Eleanor Johnson takes a provocative look at how a sexually voracious demoness from ancient myth became the defining archetype of Western misogyny.

“A fiery and fun feminist reclamation of womankind’s monstrous alter egos”—Publishers Weekly.

For as long as human societies have been telling stories, the patriarchy has felt threatened by females.


Monstrous Bitch: A History
Prof. Johnson provides an engaging cultural history of a figure she calls the “monstrous bitch,”
  • the notorious female who has haunted the patriarchal imagination for centuries,
  • feared for her sexual promiscuity, her exercise of reproductive agency and control, and
  • her outspoken way of contesting patriarchal power.
In a narrative brimming with insight, Prof. Johnson traces the origins of female monstrosity to the
  • Demoness Lamashtu of ancient Mesopotamia, showing how this infanticidal, hypersexual, loudmouthed monster appears in different guises throughout history [his story, not her story].
  • In classical Greece, she reemerges as the Sorceress Medea, the child-devouring monster Lamia, and the vengeful Furies.
Hey, Bitch! "Go Hard"
Kiss of the Enchantress (Keat's Lamia, a serpent, reptilian)
  • In the medieval and early modern periods, she is an oversexed, baby-slaying, spellcasting witch.
  • In the Romantic and Victorian eras, she's a vampiress.
  • In the modern age of psychoanalysis, she's a mental patient.
Horror Films Rise of Feminism
After this longue durƩe history, Prof. Johnson shows how monstrous bitchery has been challenged and reinterpreted in contemporary cinematic popular culture, becoming an expression of heroine-ism and resistance in films like Ginger Snaps, Jennifer's Body, and The Witch.

Johnson demonstrates how deeply embedded the roots of misogyny have become as well as why it is more critical today than ever that we expose and address them.

Participatory Theology
An irreverent look at a pervasive trope that runs through four thousand years of Western culture, Monstrous Bitch reveals that while representations of the powerful woman have evolved over time, the fear and demonization of her remains the same. More
Going full bitch mode (demoness?)

The thing about witch hunts

Women must be silenced by the patriarchy.
ABOUT: Columbia University Professor of English and Comparative Studies Eleanor Johnson specializes in late medieval literature and culture. Her first book, Practicing Literary Theory in the Late Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve, was published in 2013 (Chicago). Her second book, Staging Contemplation: Participatory Theology in Middle English Prose, Verse, and Drama, was published in 2018 (Chicago). Her Third book, Waste and the Wasters, about ecosystemic thought in medieval England, came out in 2023 (Chicago). Her fourth book, Scream with Me, on horror films in the 1970s, was published in 2025 (Atria Books). Her latest is Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women (2026). She is also the Poetry Section editor at Public Books (publicbooks.org). More

Misogyny: personification of the Seven Deadly Sins (Wellcome/Wiki)
Kreayshawn: bitch in Hollywood
Author Eleanor Johnson on Instagram
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Nirvana: Deathless, Signless (Ven. Analayo)

Venerable sir, what is final liberation(moksha)? It is knowing-and-seeing nirvana!
.
The Signless and the Deathless: On the Realization of Nirvana

The Signless and the Deathless
(BPS) The Signless and the Deathless by renowned academic Western Theravada scholar-monk Bhikkhu Anālayo is a groundbreaking investigation into the ultimate goal of Early Buddhist practice.

Published by Wisdom Publications with a foreword by Bhante G (Bhavana Society Abbot Ven. Gunaratana), this text illuminates two critical yet underappreciated facets of awakening.

Venerable Bhikkhu Analayo
Namely, there is "signless" concentration (a-nimitta)—a profound state of mind achieved by releasing the conceptual marks used to construct our daily experiences—and the "deathless" element (amata)—the complete transcendence of mental suffering caused by mortality (non-immortality).

Leveraging an extraordinary mastery of Pali Buddhist canon, Chinese Buddhist canon, and Tibetan Buddhist canon source texts, the renowned German academic Venerable Anālayo masterfully bridges rigorous historical scholarship with practical meditative insight [vipassanā-Ʊāį¹‡a].

Ultimately, this book provides advanced practitioners and Buddhist scholars alike with a precise, systematic map for stepping out of conventional mental conditioning and realizing the final end of suffering while still alive (in this very life). More
What is ultimate liberation?
Ven. Nyanatiloka (Anton Gueth) edited by Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
Vajrayana, Mahayana, and Theravada scholarship
The Sanskrit spiritual term moksha ("liberation") is in Pali vimokkha (also vimutti): The three -- namely, emptiness- (suƱƱatā-vimokkha), signless- (animitta-vimokkha), and aimless- [undirected] (appanihita-vimokkha) -- are for the first time described and enumerated in Pts.M. II, 351. As suƱƱatāsamādhi, and so on; however, they are already given in the Sangiti Sutta (DN 33).

DN 33: Buddhist scholar L. S. Cousins has tentatively suggested [25] that this was the first discourse (Pali canon sutta) created as a literary text, at the Second Buddhist Council, his theory being that "sutta" was originally a pattern of teaching rather than a body of literature. This discourse is taught by the Buddha's Chief Disciple Sariputta ("Foremost in Wisdom") at the Buddha's request. It gives lists arranged numerically from ones to tens... More
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JuBu Joseph Goldstein (Pick-Ax Dhamma)


Pick-Ax Dhamma Q&A: Deep Mining the Four Foundations of Mindfulness | Joseph Goldstein


Clear Mountain Monastery(Clear Mountain Monastery) Clear Mountain Monastery Podcast. JuBu Joseph Goldstein is co-founder (with Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg but not their good friend Sylvia Boorstein) of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts (New England) – a center for tranquility, wisdom, and compassion.
  • 00:00:00 Introduction
  • 00:01:23 What's the definition of mindfulness? (Munindra-jii)
  • 00:02:14 What is the most basic definition and the most profound form of mindfulness?
  • 00:06:33 What is your relationship with the German scholar-monk Bhante Analayo?
  • 00:10:41 How do the four qualities of ardency, clear comprehension, mindfulness, and concentration work together?
  • 00:18:41 How can one keep their purpose aligned in daily life?
  • 00:23:05 What was the Buddha's chitchat like?
  • 00:30:08 What is the specific elemental meditation you teach?
  • 00:38:55 How do you interweave different methods without digging a different hole?
  • 00:47:03 How can one transition from mindfulness of the body to rapture and refreshment?
  • 00:52:12 What is the relationship between mind knowing mind and Dzogchen teachings?
  • 1:05:03 What does the phrase "deathless element" mean?
  • 1:08:38 Is it worth speculating about nirvana (Pali nibbāna) before realizing it?
Mindfulness: A Practical Guide
to Awakening (Joseph Goldstein)
In this session of Pick-Ax Dhamma, Western Buddhist monks Ajahn Kovilo and Ajahn Nisabho interview the great Joseph Goldstein (a student of Indian mother (Dipa's mother) and Buddhist Meditation Master Dipa Ma and her Indian teacher Anagarika Munindra) about his perspectives on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness as taught in the Satipaį¹­į¹­hāna Sutta (suttacentral.net) and elaborated in his book Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening.


The conversation touches on Goldstein's
  • personal relationships with his teachers and peers Munindra-jii and Ven. Analayo,
  • the meaning of "ardency" (ātāpi);
  • the daily life practice of clear comprehension;
  • the experience of "not clinging to anything in the world";
  • how to relate to "digging for the water" of practice;
  • breathing mindfulness;
  • walking meditation;
  • intuitive practice with the [Four] Elements;
  • the similarities and differences between knowing mind as mind and Dzogchen;
  • whether nirvana is a state of awareness;
  • how to relate to such inquiries;
  • and much more!
BIOGRAPHY
Path of Insight Meditation (Goldstein+Kornfield)
Joseph Goldstein has been leading insight- and lovingkindness meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. He is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, and the Forest Refuge (Forest Refuge), a center for long-term meditation practice.

He is the author of: Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening; One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism; The Experience of Insight, among other books. To learn more about Joseph Goldsten, visit: dharma.org.

Tune in with fellow practitioners for Clear Mountain’s weekly online and hybrid events:
  • Wednesday Evening Teaching & Discussion (6:00 – 7:30 pm PT, YouTube then Zoom)
  • Saturday Morning Meditation, Teaching, & Coffee Social (9:30-11:00 am PT, online & in-person)
  • Sunday Evening “Mission Majjhima!” Sutta Teaching & Discussion (5:00-6:00 pm PT, online)
  • Website: clearmountainmonastery.org
  • Welcome! Visit Clear Mountain Monastery for details.
  • #JosephGoldstein #Awareness #Mindfulness #Meditation #PresentMoment #SelfAwareness #MentalHealth #MindfulLiving #Buddhism
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Buddhist Radio LA: Alan Watts (Sundays)


Alan Watts: "Man and Nature"
Being in the Way Podcast, Episode 8 – Hosted by son Mark Watts
Alan Watts: Being in the Way (amazon.com)
Be Here Now Network(Be Here Now Network) Alan Watts - Being in the Way. In this intimate two-part session, Alan Watts shares distinctive philosophical vantage points outlining humankind’s relationship to the nature all around us.

“All music is purposeless. Is music getting somewhere? If the aim of a symphony were to get to the final bar, the best conductor would be the one who got there fastest. When you dance do you aim to arrive at a particular place on the floor? The aim of dancing is to dance, is the present. It’s exactly the same with our life.” – Alan Watts
  • Man & Nature, Here & Now (0:00)
  • The Three Theories of Nature (11:53)
  • The Undefinable Order of Nature (35:30)
  • Trust, Play, & Purposelessness (45:00)
Buddhist Radio
Make sure to catch every single video podcast from the Be Here Now Network. Click to subscribe: @beherenownetwork.

Follow Be Here Now Network:
Be Here Now Network podcasts, courses, and articles are to help live a life in balance. Heart-centered wisdom from Ram Dass, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Krishna Das, and many more! Get a FREE Guided Meditation from Sharon Salzberg when first signing up at: beherenownetwork.com
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Boston to Witch City Salem for Halloween



13 best things to do in Salem, Massachusetts: A Dark History Guide
"Yes, I can drive a stick."
Travels with Nick(Travels with Nick) SALEM. Planning a trip to Witch City? In this comprehensive Salem travel guide, let's break down the 13 best things to do, historic landmarks to visit, and dark history attractions to see in Salem, Mass.

Let's move past the surface-level tourist traps to build a factual, boots-on-the-ground itinerary designed specifically for history buffs and dark tourism enthusiasts.

This detailed walk-through guides viewers across town to explore locations tied to the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, visit centuries-old colonial burial grounds, examine historic local architecture, and highlight the must-see museums and memorials that preserve the somber reality of early fanatical Christian American history.

Whether visiting during the summer or the busy autumn season, these 13 essential stops map out the true, unvarnished history of Salem.
Christian fanaticism: Salem Witch Trials

Tourists immerse themselves in the fascinating history of the Salem witch trials on this day trip from Boston, Mass. With transport needs taken care of aboard a luxury coach, focus on guided sightseeing plus have time to explore independently. A stop is made in Marblehead with admission included to the Abbot Hall Maritime Museum.
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Monday, October 5, 2026

Rebirth can't be real! We'd remember!

Maybe reincarnation was real. But, then, why don't we remember all our past lives?!

Rebirth is real
Narrating Karma and Rebirth (Naomi Appleton)
Punabhava (lit. "again becoming," "rebecoming," "renewed existence") is a sutra term for "rebirth," which in later literature mostly is referred to as patisandhi (defined below).

The attainment of full enlightenment (arahatta), implying the end of all suffering and any further rebirths, is often expressed in the words: Natthi 'dāni punabbhavo, "this is the last birth. Now there is no further renewed becoming" (M. 26; D. 15; Therag. 87, 339; Sn. 502).

The term is often linked with abhinibbatti (re- "arising" or "appearance"). It is said, Äyatim punabbhavābhinibbatti: "But how, O Brother, does it come to renewed existence and arising in the future?"

"Because beings, obstructed by ignorance and fettered by craving, find ever fresh delight now here, now there, for this reason there is renewed existence and arising in the future" (MN 43). (See also S.XII. 38).

Abhinibbatti also stands sometimes alone in signifying "rebirth" (e.g., in A. VI, 61; X, 65). Compare how in the second noble truth, the adjective ponobhavika means "leading to renewed existence." (See A. III, 76; Sn. 163, 273, 514, 733; S. VII, 12; X, 3). Source

The relinking consciousness
Karma, Rebirth, and Samsara (BPS.lk)
In detailing the reality of rebirth, the Buddha used the term patisandhi (lit. "relinking" or "reunion") consciousness, which is one of the 14 "functions [in the impersonal process] of consciousness" (viƱƱāna-kicca).

Patisandhi is a karma-resultant type of consciousness that arises at the moment of conception, that is, with the forming of new life in the mother's womb.

Immediately afterwards, this consciousness (citta, "mind moment") sinks into the subconscious stream of existence (bhavanga-sota), where it is conditioned. Thereby, corresponding states of subconsciousness arise. Therefore, it is really this rebirth-consciousness that determines the latent character of a person.

Technically and in an ultimate sense, "neither has this [rebirth-] consciousness transmigrated [traveled] from the previous existence to this present existence, nor did it arise without such conditions as karma, karma-formations (sankhara), propensity, object, and so on.

That this consciousness has not come from the previous existence to this present existence -- has not traveled from one life to another -- yet that it has come into existence by means of causes and conditions included in the previous rebirth such as karma and so on may be illustrated by various similes.

An echo, the light of a lamp, the impression of a seal, [a wave on the ocean, electrons in electrical current], and the image produced by a mirror, all of which are reflections, correspond to causes and conditions without being identical to them.

One does not travel to become the other, though it certainly appears that way. Conventionally speaking, of course, we may even say this is what happens as a shorthand, but closer inspection reveals that that is an illusion, a misunderstanding, or an oversimplification of the process actually taking place.

Just as the resounding of an echo is conditioned by an initial sound and so on, nowhere does a transmigration of sound take place. It is just so with this consciousness.

Furthermore, it is said: "In this continuous process, no sameness and no otherness can be found." For if there were full identity (between the different stages), then milk could never turn into curd, whereas if there were complete otherness, then curd could never come from milk....

If in a continuity of existence [a passing from one life to another] any karmic result takes place, then this karmic result neither belongs to any other being, nor does it come from any other [karma], because absolute sameness and otherness are excluded here (The Path of Purification, VisM, XVII 164ff).

In the Questions of King Menander (Mil.), it is said:

"Now, Venerable Nāgasena, the one who is reborn, is that the same as the one who has died or is that another?"

"Neither the same nor another" (na ca so na ca aƱƱo).

"Please give me an example, Ven. Nagasena."

"O, king, how do you see it: are you now, as a grown-up person, the same who you had been as a little young and tender babe?"

"No, venerable sir. Another person was the little young and tender babe, but quite a different person am I now as a grown-up man."...

Edgar Cayce returned as David Wilcock
"Is perhaps in the first watch of the night one [flame of a] lamp burning, another one in the middle watch, and yet another one in the last watch?"

"No, venerable sir. The flame [continuous light] during the whole night depends on one and the same lamp.''

"O, king, it is just so with the chain of phenomena linked together. One phenomenon arises, another vanishes, yet all are linked together [in unbroken continuity], one after the other, without interruption. In this way one reaches the final state of consciousness neither as the same person nor as another person.''

Divisions
According to the nature of their rebirth consciousness, beings are divided into the following three groups:
  • 1. ahetu-patisandhika: a "being reborn without root-conditions," is a being whose consciousness at the moment of rebirth was not accompanied by any of the three noble root-conditions (greedlessness, hatelessness, undeludedness. (See mÅ«la, "roots").
That is, selflessness, kindness, intelligence were not present. Such beings are found in the Four Lower Worlds (apāya, the downfall, subhuman planes of existence), in which case the function of rebirth is exercised by the class of consciousness listed in Table I as No. 56.

But if, lacking those good root conditions, such beings are fortunate enough to be reborn as humans in this Sensuous Sphere, they will be crippled, blind, deaf, mentally deficient, and so on. (Rebirth-consciousness = Tab. I, No. 41).
  • 2. dvihetu (duhetu)-patisandhika: a "being reborn with only two [noble] root-conditions," namely, greedlessness and hatelessness. (Rebirth-consciousness = Tab. I, Nos. 44, 45, 48, or 49).
  • 3. tihetu-patisandhika: a "being reborn with three [noble] root-conditions." Such a being can only be found among human beings (rebirth-consciousness = Tab. I, Nos. 42, 43, 46, or 47) and higher heavenly beings [in worlds superior to the human plane (manussa loka) within any of the three spheres, Sensual, Fine Material, or Immaterial].
On these three types of rebirth, see Atthasālini Tr. 11, 354-379. (Appendix: patisandhika). In the sutras, the terms for "rebirth" are chiefly punabbhava ("renewed existence") and abhinibbatti ("[re]arising," "reappearance") or both combined as punabbhavābhinibbatti. Source

NOTE: In the dictionary's Appendix, we find an additional observation: Patisandhi is chiefly a commentarial term, but it occurs several times in one of the later books of the Sutta Pitaka, the Patisambhidā Magga (Pts.M. I, 11f, 52, 59f.; II, 72f.) The usual term found in the discourses (suttas) of the Pali canon for "rebirth" is punabbhava (defined above).

LITERATURE
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