Many of you may have heard expressions in your everyday life that contain the word “samsara” (or “samsara”). This expression has different meanings, but it is far from its original meaning, because “samsara” is something else that not everyone can understand. Today you will learn how samsara is related to human life and the soul, what this word means, and how to improve one’s standing in or out of the endless cycle.
It is quite difficult to tell in a nutshell what sansara is, because the word is used in several religions (Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism).
The word “sansara” (“samsara”) is a Sanskrit transcription. The literal translation is “passing” or “flowing”. This word in the Hindu worldview texts refers to rebirth, the migration of the soul (reincarnation). It turns out that samsara, simply put, is reincarnation.
However, the process of rebirth in Hinduism is influenced by “karma”. In the course of one’s life one performs deeds that determine one’s future. At the end of one life a summation is made that affects rebirth, deciding whether it will be “high” or “low.” It’s also worth imagining samsara not as one reincarnation, but as countless, in which one life is like a small grain of sand on a big sandy beach.
Karma is the consequence of all your actions, which translates into retribution. Karma is the totality of the righteous and unrighteous actions you have performed in each of your lives.
So, according to the concept of transmigration of souls, bad karma prevents you from realizing the Tao (the right path that leads to exaltation), preventing you from reaching Brahma (God, the creator of everything, according to the Hindu religion). And since the transmigration of the soul is samsara, it is responsible for the appearance of bad karma. Regardless of the teachings in which this concept is used, it always refers to a vicious cycle of events (lives) in which the soul degrades while enjoying worldly pleasures.
In Hinduism, samsara is treated precisely as a vicious circle, from which one must necessarily escape in order to reach the abode of God. This can be attained by meditation, by yoga, or by endless love and unselfish service to God.
In Jainism, samsara is a worldly life full of pain and suffering. The soul spins endlessly in it along with karma.
In Sikhism, it is believed that in order for the soul to be placed in a human body, it must have done many good deeds in the past in order for its karma to allow it to approach the moment of exit from the cycle, and it can only exit in the form of a person.
It turns out that in all such teachings, the worldly life is represented as an illusion, from which you need to leave in order to move to a better world.
What is the Law of Sansara
Next, let us understand what the “law of samsara” is.
In essence, the “law of samsara” is the law of karma, which presents consequences to humans for their deeds. That is, it is the law that follows a person through life, making him responsible for what he does or does not do, because inaction is also action.
It turns out that the “law of samsara” is a cause-and-effect relationship that determines whether you will be rewarded or punished.
Because karma is involved as a controlling element in samsara, one cannot completely identify the two. It follows that the “law of samsara” is those consequences that arise from the state of karma, which in turn is influenced by worldly actions.
The wheel of samsara – what is it
We wrote above that the “wheel” of infinite worldliness is samsara. However, the wheel of samsara is not a simple sequence of lives, but is represented as a set of worlds that are constantly moving and transforming.
Did you know? The image of the wheel of samsara is present at the entrance of any Buddhist temple.
Thus, what we see before us is not an endless chain of successive lives of one soul, but all worlds that are constantly in motion, and this motion leads to the transformation of everything within the circle.
The circle of samsara is a vicious circle, the worlds in which are an illusion from which one can only escape by being human.
What does it mean: The wheel of samsara has taken a turn
It is worth understanding what the expression “the wheel of samsara has given a turn” means.
The passage of one circle cannot be measured in time, because one complete circle corresponds to one day of the life of God (described in the Vedas). In the usual sense, this expression means a change of epochs, which has nothing to do with the life of God. That is, we are talking about replacing the old with the new, about any transformation.
However, according to Buddhist teachings, during one revolution of the wheel, the world goes through the following stages: formation, stability, degradation and death, the state of bardo.