Samsara Is Like This: Using Coronavirus as an Opportunity to Face Uncertainty

“Samsara is a mind towards outwards; nirvana is a mind resting in its own place.”

-Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

In Buddhism, samsara is the cycle of desire that keeps us spinning around in our same patterns (karma: cause and effect) across lifetimes. Setting aside any beliefs about rebirth, you can also understand samsara as the cycle of conditioned behavior that keeps you spinning around in circles just within this life: chasing all of these things that you think will finally make you feel happy and fulfilled, only to have those things come to an end, leaving you wanting more. 

An untrained mind fails to see things as they actually are: impermanent, uncertain, unable to provide any everlasting sense of happiness. In a world constantly in flux, the ego keeps trying to locate and to make permanent a reliable source of well being: security, comfort, pleasure. Our strategy for happiness is built on a false premise that we can engineer circumstances to conform to our preferences; we keep trying to build the perfect sandcastle, only to discover that the tides keep washing it away, again and again.