Samsara

The cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

Samsara literally means wandering or flowing. In Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism it stands for the cycle of birth, death and rebirth in which, according to the tradition, all beings are caught. What you do in this life, your karma, partly determines how and where you return.

The texts do not describe samsara as something cheerful. It is a cycle of starting over again and again, with joy but also with illness, old age and loss. The aim of the spiritual life is therefore to escape it: in Hinduism that is called moksha, liberation, and in Buddhism nirvana, the extinguishing of craving and ignorance.

How that liberation is reached differs. In Hinduism the Bhagavad Gita names several paths: knowledge, devoted love for God and selfless action. In Buddhism it is about insight into the four noble truths and following the eightfold path. Both traditions see ignorance about the true nature of things as the core of the problem.

Dreams are a beloved image for understanding samsara. As long as you are dreaming, the dream seems completely real; only on waking do you see that it was a dream. Many teachers use that image for life itself: waking from samsara is like waking from a dream. In Tibetan Buddhism conscious dreaming is even practised as preparation for that awakening.

In dream interpretation, images of cycles, such as a road that keeps returning, a turning wheel or a dream that repeats itself, can be read in this light: as a pattern that calls for insight. On Dreamkin Hindu and Buddhist readings offer such perspectives, without reading a dream as a prediction.