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. 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. 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. 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. It’s like giving up an addiction or an abusive habit. But when you realize that it’s a process, there’s nothing selfish about stopping it at all. If samsara were a place, it might seem selfish for one person to look for an escape, leaving others behind. Because samsara-ing is something that each of us does, each of us has to stop it him or her self alone. Once he had found it, he encouraged others to follow it, too. This is why the Buddha tried to find the way to stop samsara-ing. 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 labor or die in their production - you see how exploitative even the most rudimentary process of world-building can be. More typically, it causes harm to at least one side of the relationship, often to both. In some cases the feeding may be mutually enjoyable and beneficial, but even then the arrangement has to come to an end. In addition to creating suffering for ourselves, the worlds we create feed off the worlds of others, just as theirs feed off ours.
Think of that the next time you gaze at the ocean or play in its waves. 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. 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 worlds we create keep caving in and killing us. In fact, it would be perfectly innocuous if it didn’t entail so much suffering. The play and creativity in the process can sometimes be enjoyable. At the same time, you bump into other people who are creating their own worlds, too. As one world falls apart, you create another one and go there. 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.
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. Think of that the next time you gaze at the ocean or play in its waves.” “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. May this article help and inspire you to take responsibility for your the suffering in your life, without judgment or self-condemnation, but with wisdom and loving-kindness. We begin to feel a joy build that, yes, we really can find a happiness that nothing or no one can take away from us, because this happiness is not dependent on conditions or on others.
Taking responsibility for the yes’s and no’s of our hearts and minds, we increasingly become the masters of our own lives. We have to understand how consciousness creates our sense of reality.Īs we do this in the way the Buddha showed, we begin to cultivate a skillful world-view that continually asks: Is this feeling, thought, action, going to increase stress and suffering, or move me closer to end of stress and suffering? In order for our actions not to continue the chain of suffering, we have to look into our minds and see what’s really going on there. One of the things I love about Buddhism is that it makes us look at our actions-what we do and don’t do-as the literal creator of our individual worlds. If you read “ Nirvana is a verb, not a place,” and it helped your practice, then this short article will probably make a lot of sense too.
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