Samsara literally means "wandering-on." Many people think of it as
the Buddhist name for the place where we currently live — the place we
leave when we go to nibbana. But in the early Buddhist texts, it's the
answer, not to the question, "Where are we?" but to the question, "What
are we doing?" Instead of a place, it's a process: the tendency to keep
creating worlds and then moving into them. As one world falls apart, you
create another one and go there. At the same time, you bump into other
people who are creating their own worlds, too.
The play and creativity in the process can sometimes be enjoyable. In
fact, it would be perfectly innocuous if it didn't entail so much
suffering. The worlds we create keep caving in and killing us. Moving
into a new world requires effort: not only the pains and risks of taking
birth, but also the hard knocks — mental and physical — that come from
going through childhood into adulthood, over and over again. The Buddha
once asked his monks, "Which do you think is greater: the water in the
oceans or the tears you've shed while wandering on?" His answer: the
tears. Think of that the next time you gaze at the ocean or play in its
waves.
In addition to creating suffering for ourselves, the worlds we create
feed off the worlds of others, just as theirs feed off ours. In some
cases the feeding may be mutually enjoyable and beneficial, but even
then the arrangement has to come to an end. More typically, it causes
harm to at least one side of the relationship, often to both. When you
think of all the suffering that goes into keeping just one person
clothed, fed, sheltered, and healthy — the suffering both for those who
have to pay for these requisites, as well as those who have to labor or
die in their production — you see how exploitative even the most
rudimentary process of world-building can be.
This is why the Buddha tried to find the way to stop samsara-ing.
Once he had found it, he encouraged others to follow it, too. Because
samsara-ing is something that each of us does, each of us has to stop it
him or her self alone. If samsara were a place, it might seem selfish
for one person to look for an escape, leaving others behind. But when
you realize that it's a process, there's nothing selfish about stopping
it at all. It's like giving up an addiction or an abusive habit. When
you learn the skills needed to stop creating your own worlds of
suffering, you can share those skills with others so that they can stop
creating theirs. At the same time, you'll never have to feed off the
worlds of others, so to that extent you're lightening their load as
well.
It's true that the Buddha likened the practice for stopping samsara
to the act of going from one place to another: from this side of a river
to the further shore. But the passages where he makes this comparison
often end with a paradox: the further shore has no "here," no "there,"
no "in between." From that perspective, it's obvious that samsara's
parameters of space and time were not the pre-existing context in which
we wandered. They were the result of our wandering.
For someone addicted to world-building, the lack of familiar
parameters sounds unsettling. But if you're tired of creating incessant,
unnecessary suffering, you might want to give it a try. After all, you
could always resume building if the lack of "here" or "there" turned out
to be dull. But of those who have learned how to break the habit, no
one has ever felt tempted to samsara again.
©2002 Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
Transcribed from a file provided by the author.
Last revised on 5 June 2010. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
How to cite this document (one suggested style): "Samsara", by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight, 5 June 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/samsara.html . Retrieved on 25 October 2013.
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although it's not my own writing, I hope this post can help you to obtain "access to insight". this writing by Thanissaro Bikkhu really enlightened, exalting to the spirit, and intensified myself to kindly reflect, kindly look back, recheck and rebuild the consistency of moving forward. good reading, good people around! xx
