In the Waters of Samsara

Samsara means the continuous flow of births, lives, deaths, and rebirths. Buddhist teachings assert that all sentient beings are trapped in a recurring cycle and that suffering is a universal characteristic of them. The ultimate aim of dharma, the truth about what remains below the appearance of reality, is to allow human beings to evade Samsara and reach Nirvana, the final liberation from illusion and suffering. Among the tools for achieving this goal, Buddhism prescribes meditation, compassion, and the cultivation of wisdom to overcome ignorance. We, humans, have an inexhaustible craving for justification, and words, thoughts, and reasoning are the tools we have to communicate. That's why we create philosophies as intellectual substitutes for experience. Yet this is a poor substitution because we attempt to speak about the unspeakable and to intellectually grasp what can only be achieved through an uncommunicable experience. That's not an intellectual endeavor, even though the repeated attempts by many Buddhist masters to justify their teachings culminated in a sophisticated philosophical construction whose understanding is far from trivial. It harbors a paradox: if reality as we perceive it is unreal, everything we may know is flawed by an intrinsic imperfection, and even we ourselves, the knowers, are not what we may imagine to be. That subtlety explains why engaging with the tenets of Buddhist teachings may appear convoluted, paradoxical, or nonsensical: they seek to convey something that must be experienced rather than described. Then, metaphorical narratives, or paradoxical questions, are often the best way to convey a kind of knowledge that, being reasonable, looks irrational. This book is a tentative offering of some reflections on and around these issues.