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Samsara-ing is something each of us does, each of us has to stop it,
himself or herself alone.
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 labour 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, himself or herself 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.
An excerpt from "Samsara", by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight, June 7, 2009,
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/samsara.html
Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Geoffrey DeGraff)
is an American Buddhist monk of the Thai forest kammathana
tradition. He studied meditation under Ajaan Fuang Jotiko, and was a
student of the late Ajaan Lee.
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