Page 272

[Alexandr Korol]

“In Buddhism, samsara is understood as the world of suffering (dukkha), passions, and lack of freedom, inextricably linked with the repeating cycle of births and deaths. In the shastra “Ornament of Liberation,” samsara is described as follows: “Its true essence is emptiness, its appearance is deception, its sign is torment and birth.” In a specific sense, samsara can also be understood as “the consciousness of ordinary beings,” which is subject to “ignorance, anger, passionate attachment,” and other defilements, or as the general sequence of such states of consciousness continuously replacing one another at every moment. Buddha Shakyamuni described samsara as follows:
One cannot find the moment from which beings, lost in ignorance, bound by the thirst for existence, begin their wanderings and roamings. What do you think, disciples, is there more water in the four great oceans, or more tears shed by you as you wandered and roamed in this long pilgrimage, grieving and weeping, because what was your lot you hated, and what you loved was not your lot. The death of a mother, the death of a brother, the loss of relatives, the loss of possessions — all this you have experienced over long ages. And as you experienced all of this over long ages, wandering and roaming in this pilgrimage, grieving and weeping — because what was your lot you hated, and what you loved was not your lot — you shed more tears than there is water in the four great oceans.” That’s how it is. And I can even offer a comment on this. It turns out that the system works in such a way that if you, so to speak, lose yourself and lose your awareness and become attached, again, to those same loved ones, then the loss of loved ones — that’s why you lose them. It’s as if that’s the logic. That is what Buddha is talking about and what samsara is essentially about. It turns out that the more you want, the more you are attached to something, the more it is taken away from you so that you stop being attached. And as long as you continue to want and become attached, it is taken from you again so that you stop wanting and attaching. And because this is a simulation, a virtual reality in which we live, the person ends up creating all their own suffering. So this doesn’t mean that a person is forbidden to have relatives — after all, they cannot renounce them, they are supposed to have them. It simply means that one must not lose oneself, one’s consciousness, must not lose awareness in relation to everything they have. As I wrote before in other books, you can have a dacha, a house, an apartment, you can have a job,