Why are we “trapped” in cyclic rebirth (rebirth, existence, Buddhism)?

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There are as many perspectives on eternity as there are people, yet these perspectives only really reflect people’s temporal state. The way you feel about eternity is going to reflect how you feel about right now. You cannot form an opinion on eternity that’s actually informed by actual eternity.

As such, the Buddhists that came up with their conception of samsara were putting their own flavor on it. Everybody does it. Christians came up with this idea of Hell by extrapolating from some mistranslations of stories told by Jesus in the New Testament. Artists for centuries drew magnificent hellscapes depicting horrific punishments, with no way to escape. Yet when you asked the authority at the time, the Pope, they’re quick to say that Hell isn’t a place, it’s a state of being apart from God.

Nobody is truly comfortable with the idea of forever. They project their fears, worries, doubts, insecurities, angers, onto the universe, or they simply watch the mechanistic workings of the visible cosmos and assume that’s all there is, something that will either go out with another bang or just fizzle out and that’s it. Just like how their physical bodies slowly deteriorate then they die.

But just as Hell is a state, of mind, of being, of existence, one wonderful definition I came across recently is that Hell is when you mistake the pleasures of evil for good, so is samsara. Little bits of ourselves die constantly, to be reborn anew into a different individual. You can never step into the same stream twice, not only does the stream constantly change, but so do you.

How you understand that state of affairs is yours and yours alone. One need not carry the things weighing them down into the future. You can put them down, right now, and enjoy freedom. Maybe the world brings them back and makes you pick them back up but you can always choose to do something else with your time and energy. And eternity means you will never run out of either.