Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 8-minute talk, Kathleen McDonald opens with a striking promise: we can reach a state where we no longer die and are reborn. To understand how, she introduces Samsāra—the Buddhist cycle of birth, death, and rebirth that traps all beings. She explains why Samsāra feels inescapable: we have no real control over where we are born, who our parents are, what experiences come our way, or even the state of our own minds. Our minds are repeatedly seized by delusions—anger, attachment, jealousy, pride—that arise without choice. Yet this cycle is not permanent. The spiritual path offers an exit: by clearing the mind of disturbing emotions and cultivating positive qualities such as compassion, wisdom, peace, and joy, we can reach enlightenment and escape death and rebirth. For those new to Buddhist teaching.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1.09 Cyclic Existence.mp3
UUID: d66df84d-7728-495f-9ee0-47ba5347d8bc
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 8.6 minutes
Words: ~1,205
And then one final point that is found in the Buddhist teachings with regard to death and dying is that it’s actually possible for us, for each and every one of us, to reach a state where we no longer have to die and take rebirth. That we are free from death. So, according to Buddhism, we are in a situation which is known as Samsāra. And word Samsāra might be familiar to you as it’s the name of a perfume, which is rather ironic because a perfume is something very sweet. Whereas the Buddhist concept of Samsāra is actually something very unsweet, very unpleasant.
The literal meaning of Samsāra, which is a Sanskrit word, is circle or wheel. And it’s sometimes translated as cyclic existence. And it refers to the situation we are in, in which we are born and then we live for a certain amount of time, and then we come to the end of our life and die. And then after death, we are again born, have a new life. And then again, come to the end of that life and we die.
And then again, we are born. So it’s like a circle, like a cycle. We keep going around and around and around through this cycle of birth and death, then another birth and another death and so on. So, the Buddhist understanding of Samsāra is that it’s not at all a pleasant situation. A pleasant experience even though most of us would say, well, we have a pretty good life.
We have good experiences. Lots of wonderful things. Lots of beautiful things in life and so on. But there’s also a lot of painful things. And those of us who are in Samsāra, beings who are stuck in this circle of death and rebirth, it’s impossible for us to go through life without having painful experiences.
So, no being who is in Samsāra is free of problems, free of difficulties, free of painful experiences. So, even though we sometimes have pleasant experiences, at other times we have painful experiences. So Samsāra is characterised by suffering, by problems. And it’s also characterised by a lack of freedom. We’re not really free.
As I mentioned before, we don’t really have choice over our rebirth, where we are born, who our parents are, what kind of body we have, how people treat us, how intelligent we are, how successful we are, what kind of experiences we have in our life and so on. These experiences that we have are determined by the actions that we did in the past. So, experiences happen to us without choice, without control. Because if we did have choice, we would have nothing but good experiences. We wouldn’t have problems.
We we wouldn’t get sick. We wouldn’t be crippled or disabled. We wouldn’t be ugly or stupid. We would have nothing but wonderful experiences in life. So the fact that we have unwanted, unpleasant, even painful or horrible experiences in life shows that we we don’t have freedom.
We don’t have choice. We don’t have control. And we can also see this just in terms of our mind, our mental state. Again, if we had complete choice or freedom, I think we would choose to always be in a good state of mind. To have nothing but happiness, joy, positive feelings such as love and openness and kindness and patience towards others, and intelligence and wisdom, make wise choices, courage rather than fear.
So that’s how our mind would be if we had choice, if we have freedom. But, the fact that our mind is sometimes and perhaps often invaded by negative thoughts and negative attitudes, unwanted feelings. We get angry. We get impatient. We become bored and restless, dissatisfied.
We feel frightened, anxious, often without any reason. So without choice, without control, these difficult, painful, unpleasant experiences arise in our mind. That’s another way we can understand how being in Samsāra is lack of freedom, the lack of choice. So even though we are in Samsāra, we are in this situation, it’s not a permanent situation. It’s not that we are doomed to be in this situation forever and ever.
There is an alternative to Samsāra and that is called nirvana and or enlightenment. So these are states that we can achieve in which we no longer are subject to having to die and take rebirth, and get sick and get old, and feel bored and restless, angry and impatient, frightened and anxious, depressed and so forth. So we are free of all the unpleasant experiences of saṃsāra. And the way that this freedom comes about is that we free our minds from the causes of Samsāra. So, why we are in Samsāra and why we have these unpleasant experiences is because of the presence in our mind of what are called delusions or they can also be called disturbing states of mind or afflictive emotions.
So these are aspects of our mind that when they arise, they disturb our mind. They disturb our peace of mind. They make us unhappy. They’re they’re unpleasant. And they can also lead us to do things which make other people unhappy.
Even cause suffering to other people. Anger, for example, one of the best examples. When we get angry, our own mind is disturbed. It’s impossible to be really peaceful and happy at the same time as being angry. And it can also happen that our anger spills out onto others.
We we act out our anger physically harming others or verbally abusing them or just speaking harshly and disturbing other people’s peace of mind. So, I think it’s quite easy to see that anger leads to painful experiences, difficult experiences both for our self, the one who’s experiencing the anger, and for other people who might be around when we’re angry over the objects of our anger. So, that’s an example of a delusion, a disturbing state of mind. And there are many others like attachment or greed, jealousy, pride, selfishness, and ego and so forth. So, these delusions or negative aspects of the mind are not permanent.
They are not things which will be in our mind forever, but it’s possible for the mind to become free of them. It’s possible to bring the mind to a state where there are no more disturbing thoughts or emotions arising. We have become completely free of them. And instead, our mind is fully developed in all positive qualities such as pure unconditional love and compassion, feeling peaceful, feeling happy, joyful, having wisdom, seeing the true nature of things, And so on. So, all the positive qualities or aspects of the mind, those that bring peace and happiness both to ourselves and others, those are there in the mind and they are fully developed, fully perfected.
And they are present all of the time. So, this is what happens to one who is following the path, following the spiritual path to liberation, to enlightenment. So when this perfection of the mind has come about, when the mind has become free of all that is negative and all that is positive is developed, that is the state known as enlightenment.