Samsara: cycling through REBIRTHS

Ven. Nyanatiloka (B. Dictionary); Giphy; Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Symbolic Tibetan art showing the various worlds all caught in Death's mouth.

Samsāra is the "round of rebirth," literally "perpetual wandering," "cycling through the revolving wheel of life and death."

It is a name that designate the sea of life or ocean of suffering, ever restlessly heaving up and down. It is the symbol of this continuous process of ever again and again being reborn, growing old and decrepit, suffering then dying only to be reborn.

Samsara is not suffering in the sense of unending agony but rather of constant nausea with bouts of agony, bouts of bliss, and long stretches of carrying on as karmas (past actions) come to fruition and play themselves out with imponderable ramifications.

Results (vipaka, phala, mental resultants and fruits) ripen as the outcomes of ill-done and well-done deeds alike and interact with one another, constantly affected by our present choices and responses.

More precisely put, samsāra is the unbroken chain of the fivefold aggregate-combinations that -- constantly changing from moment to moment -- continuously follow one upon the other through inconceivable periods of time. We call this ultimately impersonal process "renewed existence," "again becoming," or simply "rebirth."

• "Reincarnation" should be avoided because it is a word for "a spirit again entering flesh" (re - again, incarnation = into flesh), which is ultimately inaccurate. Conventionally, this may be what seems to be happening. "Transmigration," foolishly used by Ven. Thanissaro, is completely misleading. For it suggests an unchanging actor or doer migrating through many births, which is utterly at odds with the Buddhist "Doctrine in Ultimate Terms" (Abhidharma), which states there is no soul, no self, no ego actually going through this impersonal process.
• But that is very tricky to understand, because it is the basis by which we are trapped in ignorance, clinging, and being averse to experience taken as personal. Being rid of this wrong view of "self" is the entrance to the first stage of enlightenment (bodhi), awakening (nirodha or the "attainment of the extinction of ignorance"), and complete freedom (NIRVANA).
• Nirvana is NOT Samsara, as is popularly stated by the Hinduistic Mahayana Buddhism, that clings to a doctrine of self that states that living beings are consciousness itself, or a conscious soul, or a "Higher Self," all of which the historical Buddha went to great pains to reject and dispel. The meaning of the 1960s slogan "Nirvana is Samsara" seems to be that, "Everyone is already enlightened, so there is nothing to do but behave in our conventional lives as if we were ultimately free" like the Buddha and the arhats, the "Noble Ones." Nirvana is not samsara because nirvana is free of suffering, and samsara is steeped in it. Nirvana is free of greed, hatred, and delusion, whereas samsara is nourished by these underlying motivations.

A single lifetime, like this one, constitutes only a miniscule and fleeting fraction of this samsara. To be able to comprehend the First Noble (= leading to enlightenment) Truth of the disappointing/unsatisfactory nature of all things because of their utter inability to fulfill us.

One must allow one's gaze to rest upon the samsāra, upon this frightful chain of rebirths (now here in a good place, soon in a terrible place of suffering, and so on according to our just desserts), rather than merely on one single lifetime, which may of course be more or less painful than the entire process taken as a whole.

See also the Three Universal Characteristics of All Existence (ti-lakkhana), "not-self" (anatta), "ultimate truth" (paramattha), and "rebirth" (patisandhi).