Samsara and How to Escape the Wheel of Suffering

The dance of samsara is one of perpetual frustration and suffering.
— Rory B Mackay

In the first article in this series, we explored the four basic human pursuits: the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, virtue, and liberation.

We concluded that whatever you’re seeking in life, whether it’s fame, fortune or fast cars, it always boils down to the desire to be free of limitation.

Every desire is ultimately a desire for liberation.

However, rather than seeking liberation, or moksha, directly, we get deluded by the belief that happiness is only to be found outside of us, in the world of objects. And so our search for happiness is confined to the phenomenal world of objects, people, and situations.

The problem is, this never works.

Life being what it is — a zero-sum game — you can guarantee there’s always suffering involved when it comes to the pursuit of worldly objects.

First of all, there’s pain and effort involved in attaining the object of your desire. Then there’s the struggle of having to maintain it. Finally, there’s the sorrow that comes when you eventually lose it.

The bottom line is this. Nothing in this world is capable of delivering lasting happiness.

That’s because all objects in maya (the phenomenal reality) are limited and time-bound. Even things that seem relatively eternal, such as the stars and galaxies, are subject to a slow spiral of decay and death.

A life spent seeking happiness and wholeness from a world that can never provide it is a life wasted.

The sorrows for such a soul are endless.

This compulsion to pursue objects in the hope of deriving happiness, freedom and wholeness from them is called samsara. The wheel of samsara is a never-ending cycle of lack, desire, attachment and suffering.

This is the basic suffering of humankind; a malady affecting virtually every human being on the planet.

Samsara is a case of false expectation; of misplaced seeking. Deluded by maya, the samsari seeks permanence in the world of the impermanent, fulfilment from the finite, and happiness from that which can only ever deliver it with an equal measure of sorrow.

Let’s explore how this happens.

A Basic Sense of Lack

The basis of samsara is always a sense of lack. Those who feel whole and complete in themselves have few desires. After all, what’s there to desire when you know you are the source of your own happiness?

The basic human problem is that while we all know that we are, we don’t know who we are.

This is a universal problem, irrespective of age, gender, nationality, income or social status. We all know that we exist, but we have a fundamental lack of knowledge about our inherent nature and identity.

Swami Dayananda says:

“It is the glory of man that he is conscious of himself. However, the self he is aware of is not a complete, adequate self. It is, unfortunately, a wanting, inadequate self.”

Because you take appearance to be real and believe yourself to be a limited body-mind-entity, you feel a great sense of lack.

This feeling of lack is called dukkha, which means “unsatisfactoriness”.

Regardless of your personal circumstances, whether good or bad, the body, mind and ego are always by their very nature limited, and forever haunted by the spectre of their own inevitable demise.

As a result of this basic sense of lack, limitation and inadequacy, you desperately try to control your life as best you can. The mind becomes a bubbling cauldron of want and desire. Driving your entire psyche is an endless array of likes and dislikes; desires and aversions.

A person can only want what they feel they lack, so the greater your sense of self-limitation, the stronger your desires.

The problem is, no matter how much you strive and how much you get, it’s never enough. It’s never sufficient to resolve that fundamental sense of lack and incompleteness that you feel at the core of your being.

Until you deal with the root of the problem — dukkha, and the belief or assumption that you’re a lacking and limited ego — it’s impossible to escape the whirlpool of suffering that is samsara. You just keep drowning in it, over and over again.

Attachment, Sorrow and Delusion

This sense of self-limitation gives rise to three other factors to produce samsara:

1. Raga (Binding Desire/Attachment)

Raga is born of your sense of incompleteness. Because your deepest desire is to be whole and complete, you actively seek the objects and circumstances you believe you will complete you.

‘Desire’ isn’t a strong enough translation for raga. Raga refers to those intractable, binding desires that form the basis of emotional attachments and psychological addictions.

These attachments are always self-centred in nature. When you’re driven by raga, your primary concern is fulfilling your own emotional needs. You’re determined to get all that you can out of whatever people, relationships, or situations you consider necessary for your happiness. Often you don’t really care whose toes you have to step on along the way, or whether or not you’re violating dharma.

2. Shoka (Sorrow)

Raga inevitably leads to shoka, which means sorrow.

Being emotionally dependent on external factors for your happiness is the antithesis of freedom.

Someone who relies on crutches to walk might feel secure, but it’s a false security. The moment those crutches are removed, a fall is inevitable. The loss of a psychological crutch, whether it’s a relationship, a job, or a cherished possession, will cause terrible suffering. The greater the attachment, the worse the sorrow.

As Swami Paramarthananda states, “every attachment is a potential sorrow.”

3. Moha (Delusion)

Sorrow and anger in time result in moha (delusion).

A mind overcome by attachment can’t see clearly.

You can no longer discriminate between right and wrong, between what you should and shouldn’t do. Before you know it, you’re living an adharmic life. The more adharma you commit, the more you suffer and the more suffering you end up inflicting on others.

The basic sense of inadequacy that initiated the samsaric wheel is then reinforced—and round and round the wheel turns.

The dance of samsara is one of perpetual frustration and suffering.

You find yourself continually performing the actions you think will bring happiness and wholeness. Unfortunately, nothing in this world is capable of delivering lasting happiness. Even the attainment of desire is a bitter pill to swallow because, given that everything in this world is in constant flux, objects are incapable of providing lasting happiness.

Yet, owing to ignorance and the momentum of past actions, the vasanas (subtle tendencies, or psychological compulsions) compel you to keep chasing rainbows in the hope of eventually finding your pot of gold.

Sadly, this just keeps you locked into ever greater spirals of attachment, sorrow and delusion. Once the wheel of samsara is turning, it can seem almost impossible to get off it.

Re-educating the mind

We always tend to assume that our outer circumstances are the cause of our sorrow.

However, outer problems, or what Swami Dayananda calls ‘topical problems’, are incidental. They come and go. The moment you solve one issue another comes along.

The real cause of your sorrow — the fundamental problem — is always closer to home.

While topical problems vary from person to person, the problem of samsara is fundamentally the same for all human beings.

This universal problem comes with a universal solution. Unlike life’s topical problems, samsara has a ‘one size fits all’ solution.

The issue all along was one of faulty thinking. Samsara arises in the mind; with this false notion of who you think you are and what you think you need in order to be happy and whole.

As Albert Einstein once said, you can only solve a problem when you deal with it at the level of the problem. Trying to get out of samsara by rearranging the outer circumstances of your life will have no effect whatsoever. You can’t cure a sore shoulder by rubbing ointment on your toe. You have to trace the problem to its source and then deal with it at that level.

The problem arises in the mind and that’s the only place it can be solved.

The cause of samsara is self-ignorance; the act of misapprehending the nature of the self.

This ignorance manifests as a basic sense of lack and limitation. The entity that you take to be yourself isn’t a whole, complete self. Indeed, it’s an incomplete, wanting, deficient self. As no one can be happy with such a self, this gives rise to the cycle of desire, attachment, sorrow and delusion.

The way out of samsara is, therefore, to re-educate the mind.

The Problem is You and The Solution is You

There are four stages to dealing with any problem.

First of all, you have to be aware of the problem.

Once you’ve identified the problem, you’ll most likely try to deal with it by yourself.

A lot of the time that simply won’t work. The mind naturally tends to assume that its problems are caused by external factors. So you immediately set about trying to rearrange the external conditions of your life. You might try getting a new job, a new house, or a new partner. You change your hair, get a new wardrobe, or maybe you book a holiday or enrol at college.

Unfortunately, no matter how well you try to makeover the outer conditions of your life, the fundamental problem remains. You can have all the wealth, health and success in the world and still feel empty and miserable inside.

If that’s the case, you eventually have to concede that the problem isn’t ‘your life’.

The problem is you.

No one likes to admit that they are the source of their own problems. But, on the upside, if you’re the problem, you’re also the solution.

Once the real issue has been discovered and you realize that you’re unable it solve it by yourself, the next step is to acknowledge your helplessness and find someone who can help.

That’s what Vedanta is for.

Vedanta first outlines the problem — the suffering of samsara caused by lack of Self-knowledge.

It then reveals the remedy: Self-knowledge.

Vedanta is a pramana, a means of Self-knowledge. The remedy is applied by listening to the teaching and applying it through the practice of reflection, contemplation and self-inquiry.

The next article in this series will guide you through the process of self-inquiry which leads to Self-knowledge and liberation from the suffering of samsara.

The articles in this Essence of Vedanta series are excerpts from my commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, which systematically unfolds pretty much the entire teaching of Advaita Vedanta. Be sure to get your copy and enjoy the entire series and much more in its entirety. “Bhagavad Gita – The Divine Song” by Rory B Mackay is available on the Unbrokenself shop here, and also on Amazon and all other good booksellers.