Saṃsāra (Buddhism)
[1] Samsara is considered to be dukkha, suffering, and in general unsatisfactory and painful,[2] perpetuated by desire and avidya (ignorance), and the resulting karma and sensuousness.
[7][8][9] In Buddhism, saṃsāra is the "suffering-laden, continuous cycle of life, death, and rebirth, without beginning or end".
A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating & wandering on".
[28][29] The early Buddhist texts suggest that Buddha faced a difficulty in explaining what is reborn and how rebirth occurs, after he invented the concept that there is "no self" (Anatta).
[30] Later Buddhist scholars, such as the mid-1st millennium CE Pali scholar Buddhaghosa, suggested that the lack of a self or soul does not mean lack of continuity; and the rebirth across different realms of birth – such as heavenly, human, animal, hellish and others – occurs in the same way that a flame is transferred from one candle to another.
Theravada Buddhists assert that rebirth is immediate while the Tibetan schools hold to the notion of a bardo (intermediate state) that can last at least forty-nine days before the being is reborn.
"[38] Buddhist cosmology typically identifies six realms of rebirth and existence: gods, demi-gods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts and hells.
[note 7] Karma or 'action' results from an intentional physical or mental act, which causes a future consequence.
At the same time karma can exist as a simple 'act of will', a forceful mental intention or volition that does not lead to an act of body or speech.
[note 9] Inconsistencies in the oldest texts show that the Buddhist teachings on craving and ignorance, and the means to attain liberation, evolved, either during the lifetime of the Buddha, or thereafter.
"[80][note 12] The four truths were superseded by pratityasamutpada, and still later, in the Hinayana schools, by the doctrine of the non-existence of a substantial self or person.
[9][note 16] The theme that Nirvana is non-Self, states Peter Harvey, is recurring in early Buddhist texts.
[92] There is a connection between consciousness, karmic activities, and the cycle of rebirth, argues William Waldron, and with the destruction of vinnana, there is "destruction and cessation of "karmic activities" (anabhisankhara, S III, 53), which are considered in Buddhism to be "necessary for the continued perpetuation of cyclic existence.
Winston L. King, a writer from the University of Hawai'i Press, references two integral parts of Anatta in Philosophy East and West.
"[100] Obtaining awareness of Anatta and non-self reality results in a, "freedom from the push-pull of his own appetites, passions, ambitions, and fixations and from the external world's domination in general, that is, the conquest of greed, hatred, and delusion.
[105] David McMahan concludes that the attempts to construe ancient Buddhist cosmology in modern psychological terms is modernistic reconstruction, "detraditionalization and demythologization" of Buddhism, a sociological phenomenon that is seen in all religions.
[106] A pre-modern form of this interpretation can be seen in the views of Zhiyi, the founder of the Tiantai school in China.
