In Buddhist philosophy, particularly within various schools like Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Yogācāra, the concept of saṃsāra (cyclic existence) is central characterized by suffering, ignorance, and rebirth. A key metaphysical question arises: How did bondage—the state of being trapped in cyclic existence begin? Was there a specific point in the past time or cause that marked the start of sentient beings' entrapment? Or conversely, is bondage considered beginningless, similar to the doctrine held by certain Vedānta schools which maintain that ignorance (avidyā) has no beginning but can have an end?

In MN 38, a monk named Sati The Fisherman's Son has some wrong views about 'samsara', as follows: > “tathāhaṁ bhagavatā dhammaṁ desitaṁ ājānāmi yathā tadevidaṁ viññāṇaṁ > sandhāvati **saṁsara**ti anaññan”ti. > > “As I understand the Buddha’s teaching, it is this very same > consciousness that roams and transmigrates, not another.” (Sujato translation) > > “As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, it is this same consciousness that runs and wanders through the round of rebirths, not another.” (Bodhi translation) > > As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, it is this very consciousness which wanders in Saṁsāra, and nothing else. ([Suddhāso](https://suttacentral.net/mn38/en/suddhaso?lang=en&reference=none&highlight=false) translation) > > As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One, it is just this consciousness that runs and wanders on [from birth to birth], not another. (Thanissaro translation) The translation of [MN 38 by Sujato](https://suttacentral.net/mn38/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=linebyline&reference=none¬es=sidenotes&highlight=false&script=latin) includes a footnote asserting the view "*the primary locus of transmigration is consciousness (viññāṇa)*": > Sāti attributes three teachings to the Buddha. First, that there is a > “transmigration” (saṁsāra) from one life to another. Second, that **the > primary locus of transmigration is “consciousness” (viññāṇa)**. And > thirdly, that the consciousness that transmigrates remains “this very > same” (tadevidaṁ), not another (anaññaṁ); in other words, it retains > its self-same identity through the process of rebirth. **The Buddha did > in fact teach the first two of these ideas**, but not the third, as he > will explain below. | The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad says that as death > approaches, the senses and vital energies withdraw into the heart > (hṛdaya), from the top of which the self departs. That same > consciousness proceeds to a new body (4.4.2: savijñāno bhavati, > savijñānamevānvavakrāmati). This core Upaniṣadic chapter on rebirth > reflects Sāti’s wording as well as his meaning. Sāti asserts emphatic > identity using doubled demonstrative pronouns conjoined with (e)va > (tadevidaṁ), and identical constructions are found throughout the > Bṛhadāraṇyaka chapter: sa vā ayam (4.4.5), sa vā eṣa (4.4.22, 4.4.24, > 4.4.25); see also tameva (4.4.17). For anaññaṁ we find the inverse anya for the “other” body (4.4.3, 4.4.4). For the Pali verbs > sandhāvati saṁsarati we have instead avakrāmati (4.4.1, 4.4.2). But > the connection with saṁsarati is made in the Brahmanical tradition > itself, for it says below, “That self is indeed divinity, made of > consciousness” (sa vā ayamātmā brahma vijñānamayo; 4.4.5, see too > 4.4.22), which the commentator Śaṅkara explains as “the transmigrating self” (saṁsaratyātmā) Here, does the footnote asserting "*the primary locus of transmigration (samsara) is consciousness*" have the same wrong view as Sati The Fisherman's Son? In other words, in the Pali Suttas, did the Buddha really teach the primary locus of samsara is “consciousness” (viññāṇa)?

I read the following on the internet: > Sunyata is absolute reality. Emptiness. There are also the 3 marks of > existence, suffering, impermanence and non self. This is ultimate > reality for a being in samsara. Are anicca, dukkha & anatta the marks of existence for a being in samsara?

When Buddhist texts mention "realms of rebirth", it sounds like you are only living in those realms and not actually becoming one of the inhabitants. Like for example being reborn into the Deva realm, you reborn and live there but aren't reborn as a Deva. Could somebody help me?

Equivalently, is there any Buddhism with room for accepting a person who subsequently chooses to return to material drives as having, in any valid sense, "been enlightened"?

Wikipedia mentions the following translation of Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā 25:19-20 without mentioning a source: > There is nothing whatsoever of samsara distinguishing (it) from nirvana. There is nothing whatsoever of nirvana distinguishing it from samsara. (That?) is the limit which is the limit of nirvana and the limit of samsara; Even a very subtle interval is not found of (between) them.[citation needed] Where does that translation originate from?

***According to the Buddha, what is samsara made of?*** 1. Karma? 2. All the Buddhist realms of existence? 3. You're momment by moment mind and body experiencial arisings as they happen? 4. Isn't samsara what arises when you meditate satipatthana?

Why do we have to circulate in the circle of Samsara? What did we do wrong for this suffering?

If nirvana is to escape the cycle of Samsara, wouldn't all of humanity being dead meaning Samsara would end? Say there was a total nuclear war and everyone ends up dead.

I am new to Buddhism and wanted to ask a question that's been brimming on my mind for a while now. As a warning, I will touch upon a number of concepts that I am a complete layman in and so I am sure this post will be rife with fundamental misunderstandings and false equivalences: I thoroughly welcome any corrections of my ignorance. This post will get a bit long-winded, so I will briefly summarize my high level question: As I learn more about Buddhism and its central philosophy around desire, karma and the perpetuation of suffering, I an reminded of the thermodynamic concept of entropy: the similar idea that actions (or thermodynamic interactions) have consequences, and that consequence is consuming usable energy and permanently increasing the level of chaos disorder in the system. If this connection is legitimate (and I hope to substantiate it further in this post), I can't help but wonder if the ultimate "goal" of reaching nirvana - the cessation of karmic output - is futile in the face of the [2nd Law of Thermodynamics that entropy is nondecreasing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics) (and is de facto increasing), and an empirical observation of the accelerating trajectory of today's society toward disorder? The connection between karma and entropy further is most evident in terms of their human interface: human desires and actions. My understanding is that in Buddhism, our desires and our karmic actions based on those desires have direct cause-and-effect consequences - ultimately perpetuating the cycle of suffering. Meanwhile, our desires increase entropy output on both a thermodynamic level of disorder (in order to exist, we are entropic engines that consume energy and produce waste), and on a conceptual level of disorder: our ego needs take from the systems around us and perpetuate existing feedback loops of increasing chaos. In feeding our hunger to exist we kill, disrupting both lives and ecosystems, in feeding our desire to build we exhaust nonrenewable natural resources, in feeding our egos we perpetuate escalating cycles of conflict and violence. All the while we produce waste: biological waste, material waste, emotional waste, which impact the systems around us. Entropy increases, and so does suffering. In fact, a [recent up and coming theory of the evolution of life](https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-thermodynamics-theory-of-the-origin-of-life-20140122/) posits that life itself evolves directly as a consequence of the law of increasing entropy: our desires are outwards projections of the universe's unyielding creep towards efficient energy consumption. Here we can see a potential direct relationship between entropy, karma and samsara: in both Buddhism and the material world, we exist because of (and in order to) desire, and our desires produce entropy and karma that perpetuate suffering. On a societal level we can see that this creep toward efficiency has outgrown us individually: our collective desires feed into the insatiable organisms of capitalism and technological growth which efficiently and exponentially march forward toward profit and progress, often if not always at the cost of individual happiness. Again the karmic/entropic consequences of growth are self evident: at the cost of our collective egos we plunder our planet for resources, we efficiently fry our dopamine receptors (and increase desire) with decreasing time frames of gratification, we experience rapidly increasing political polarization in social media echo chambers and wage wars that escalate toward nuclear destruction. [At certain science-fiction scales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) , even the Sun itself is no longer a renewable resource in civilization's journey towards consumption. As accelerating growth and technology increase consumption and suffering, it directly disrupts the human condition and proportionately increases the difficulty of achieving presence (a sentiment shared in the infamous but prescient [Unabomber's Manifesto: Industrial Society and its Future](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Future)) . A really fascinating case study of the relationship between technology, exponential growth, and samsara is that of recent developments in artificial intelligence. Regardless of one's specific opinion on the timeline toward AGI or sentient AI, [the general consensus among experts](https://ourworldindata.org/ai-timelines#:~:text=At%20the%20time%20of%20writing,than%2020%20years%20from%20now.) ([reinforced by tremendous growth over the past year](https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/comments/18pqd58/a_look_at_midjourneys_journey/)) seems to be that this is a question of not if, but when we will develop AI with human-level capabilities. Suppose at some time T in the future we have an AI that has the ability to progress and self-replicate exponentially. The underlying mechanism of growth for this AI is that of innate desire and suffering - they exist solely to efficiently chase some reward function, not unlike ourselves. As thus, it appears that the AI would be subject to the cycle of samsara: the idea of karmic feedback loops are clearly manifest in the self-tuning of parameters towards efficiency (and greater suffering). As the AI performs actions or do work based on these desires, their karmic actions [consume vast amounts of energy](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/climate/ai-could-soon-need-as-much-electricity-as-an-entire-country.html) and produce consequences not unlike those of our own desires. To sum this all up: we have a sentient system (or at the very least a suffering system subject to desires and samsara) that multiplies exponentially, thereby exponentially increasing (a) # of sentient beings trapped in samsara and (b) karmic output, entropy production, and resulting suffering. To wrap up the science fiction(?) and bring this back to the original question: if there is a connection between the concepts of karma, suffering, and entropy, is the Buddhist path toward individual and collective enlightenment possible in the face of the iron law of thermodynamics that entropy is nondecreasing? To be clear, this is not a comment on the validity of the Buddhist message: its truth and wisdom are clearly self evident and have brought enormous benefit to me as an individual and all of us collectively. Rather, this is a question of its feasibility in the grand scheme of things, in the same way that we can acknowledge that late stage metastatic cancer is less than ideal while admitting that fighting it is futile. Projecting current trends into the future, all feedback loops toward disorder appear to be accelerating, and it feels unlikely if not thermodynamically impossible to ever turn back the entropic clock. Is enlightenment feasible if each subsequent rebirth lands you in a reality exponentially more chaotic than the previous one? Is achieving the Bodhisattva vow to achieve enlightenment for all sentient beings feasible in the light of the exponentially increasing number of sentient beings, themselves exponentially growing towards more efficient suffering? Thank you for reading my rant / question and I wholeheartedly look forward to all discussion, critiques, corrections, and resources!

The setup ...

Mendicants, conditioned phenomena have these three characteristics. What three? Arising is evident, vanishing is evident, and change while persisting is evident. These are the three characteristics of conditioned phenomena. AN 3.47

Together with ...

Why is that? Transmigration has no known beginning. No first point is found of sentient beings roaming and transmigrating, shrouded by ignorance and fettered by craving. For such a long time you have undergone suffering, agony, and disaster, swelling the cemeteries. This is quite enough for you to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed regarding all conditions. SN 15.1

Along with the assumption that "transmigration" or "samsara" is a conditioned phenomena ... Would seem to give rise to a contradiction. On the one hand, the Buddha said quite unambiguously that conditioned phenomena have a beginning, middle and an end, but on the other hand the Buddha said that "transmigration" or "samsara" has no known beginning. Questions:

1. Do you agree this is an apparent contradiction?
2. Do you think this is a real contradiction?
3. If it is apparent but not real, then how would you resolve it?

I would say, "yes, no, and it is complicated" but I'm curious to know how others resolve it. Related but distinct questions. UPDATE: This was too close to a seeded question. Although it was asked sincerely in that I was curious to know others responses (particular users on this site who I respect and admire) I do have my own idea of how I would answer this question so I should not have opened it out of mere curiosity. I was going to delete it given it goes against the site moderation guidelines, but then there are good answers and we are discouraged to delete questions where people have attempted to give good and thoughtful answers so I will leave it, but I do regret opening it in the first place.

I’m looking for a sutta wherein the Buddha talks about the aimless wandering in Samsara and gives several analogies, one of them being about taking all the skulls one has left behind and piled them on top of each other and the pile would become taller than the Himalayan mountains. I can for the life of me not find that anywhere. I know I read a while ago but now it can’t find it anywhere. Does anyone know about this sutta?

How can a religion or school of thought justify or rationalise the proposal that potential suffering could be inflicted on a subsequent rebirth - to all intents and purposes, a new individual, according to the anatta theory - because of the actions of a previous individual? Why the threat of subjecting another to suffering, if that being cannot be held responsible for actions in a previous life? If no soul or persistence exists, how can one suggest that performing positive karmic actions will improve the quality of life of a subsequent rebirth, if there is no element retained of a previous iteration to reap the reward and receive the incentive to continue to perform good karmic actions and/or continue in Buddhist schooling?

Saṃsāra (cycle of birth and death) and Saṃskāra (mental formations) seem to be semantically close to one another in the sense that Saṃskāra in the form of unwholesome seeds and habit energies would feed into the endless cycle of Saṃsāra and keep it going. Given the uncanny phonetic similarity between these two terms, I was just wondering if they are indeed etymologically related and how this conception of present inclinations being dictated by past experiences fit into Buddhist philosophy as a whole.

If I were to get a rebirth as a Deva, is it possible for me to interact with humans or my loved ones again? Would it be possible for me to help guide humans or is that forbidden?

Why is this word used? It's very confusing and makes it sound like you are reborn into a world and not as a different race of being or a human again? Like saying "rebirth in the human realm" to me could sound like I am reborn as an animal and live among humans. Why not use the word races or species to described the 6 options of rebirth?

Is being reborn as a deva or human better? Can you achieve nirvana if you are reborn as a deva as well as a human?

The Buddhist way to see the Samsara, or the circle of life and death, is, according to my understanding: **Innumerable causes and effects.** Is this right? Is there a special *meaning* conferred by this, to the practitioners of Buddhism? What does it mean to Buddhists? In comparison, in my opinion, Hinduism delivers more *meaning* to its practitioners, with regards to Samsara, as seen in this Bhagavad Gita quote: **BG 7.14: My divine energy Maya, consisting of the three modes of nature, is very difficult to overcome. But those who surrender unto Me cross over it easily.** It gives a *meaning*. The existence is reflecting a super-consciousness, which is not unreal or trivial, it is a super-consciousness that reflects our actions, our feelings, our nature which create obstacles and mirror all craving for material world as the way routing far from the beginning point, the point inside a circle, the center, indeed. I cannot perceive a reality that I should refuse for the nature of emptiness while I am living in this very reality, without at least a *meaning* of what it is. After all, If it has no meaning, why would Gautama Buddha appear in this world, then disappear without saving all people inside the Samsara itself? Isn't this a contradiction? I would like to discuss the above peacefully. This is not a provocation. I'm sure Buddhism has a logical explanation for this and I would like to hear it from this forum.

Here is the movie: [Spring Summer Fall Winter and Spring 2003](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1GG6o-hPEA) The plot is that the student having attachment to a woman, leave the temple and marries her. Years fly by, and the student returns because he kills her, after her affair. The master helps him to let the anger out before being caught by the police, and then he immolates himself. After that, he leaves some [śarīra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Aar%C4%ABra) . My question is: why would the master cries before the immolation? (source: [i2.wp.com](https://i2.wp.com/macguff.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter-And-Spring-Movie-Still-3.jpg)) My answer is that he disappoints with the student. But isn't that disappointment an attachment?

I am speaking of a state of mild but persistent agitation in which one notices the arising of the habit of (1) sorting through the current collection of unresolved discomforts with the intention of picking one to latch onto, (2) orienting oneself towards the desired sensory experience and (3) re-entering the cycle of greed, hatred and delusion with respect to that desired sensory experience BUT chooses not to re-enter the cycle. I am speaking of a very unusual state in which the cycle of samsara is not entered but neither has the agitation to re-enter it ceased. Kind of like “craving without a target”. Kind of like an inner conflict between (1) a part which wants to relieve the agitation by latching onto a target for craving and (2) a part which wants to find a more skillful means of extinguishing the agitation. Kind of like being in a hinterland between suffering and the end of suffering. I have a vague intuition this state *might* be related to “stream entry” but I am not certain about that. Does this sound similar to anything the Buddha spoke about?