The round of rebirth

Saṃsāra is a word used in both Sanskrit and Pali meaning roughly "wandering on" or "continual flowing," and it names the cycle of being born, dying, and being born again, over and over, across countless lifetimes. Like rebirth itself, this picture is shared across the Indian traditions: Hinduism and Jainism also speak of saṃsāra. It is described as beginningless, a wheel whose first turn no one can find.

In the Buddhist telling, what keeps the wheel spinning is the mind's own habits, above all ignorance (not seeing how things really are) and craving (the restless thirst for more experience, more becoming). Driven by these, beings are reborn again and again into many kinds of existence, sometimes pleasant, sometimes terrible, but always impermanent and ultimately unsatisfying. Even the happiest heavenly life within saṃsāra eventually ends and gives way to another birth.

The distinctively Buddhist twist is the same one that runs through its whole worldview: this wandering turns without any permanent self or soul riding along inside it. There is a real chain of cause and effect, but no fixed traveler. And because the cycle is fueled by causes in the mind, it can be un-fueled. When ignorance and craving are uprooted, the wheel stops turning, and that cessation is nirvāṇa, the goal of the path. Saṃsāra is therefore not a place to escape to a better corner of, but a process to bring to rest.