Samsara · Pāli/Skt: saṁsāra

In the Assu Sutta (SN 15.3) the Buddha describes a round with no floor beneath it: “From an inconstruable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating & wandering on” (trans. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu). He measures its length by asking which is greater, the water in the four great oceans or “the tears you have shed while transmigrating & wandering this long, long time”. The purpose of so bleak a picture is release rather than despair: beings have suffered “enough to become disenchanted with all fabricated things, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released”.

What keeps the wheel turning is named in the Buddha’s first discourse, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56.11): “the craving that makes for further becoming”. Its ending is “the remainderless fading & cessation, renunciation, relinquishment, release, & letting go of that very craving”, and the same discourse records the Buddha’s own declaration, “This is the last birth. There is now no further becoming.”

Traditions map the round, and the way out of it, somewhat differently. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes cyclic existence as a state in which “vast numbers of sentient beings are trapped”, “continually wandering from one realm to another, unable to escape”. It also notes the Mahāyāna turn: “all serious Mahāyānists take the bodhisattva vow, promising to become Buddhas in order to help all beings”, and mature Mahāyāna traditions hold that buddhas “will remain in cyclic existence until all sentient beings have reached liberation”. For the fuller picture, see our guide to samsara.