What Is Samsara (Rinne Tensho) — Rebirth and the Soul's Journey Through the Six Realms

"If I am reborn, let it be a different life next time." When such words touch us, we are quietly reaching toward the ancient idea of "rinne tensho" — samsara. This article traces what kind of idea it is, from its origins to kindred beliefs around the world.

What is samsara (rinne tensho)

Rinne tensho is the idea that living beings, even after death, are reborn again and again into other living forms. "Rinne" is the endless repetition of birth and death, like a wheel turning on and on. "Tensho" is being reborn anew in changed form. The word derives from the Sanskrit "samsara" (a flowing, a wandering), rendered into the Chinese characters read as "rinne."

Joined, these two words shape a vast vision of the world in which the soul circles without end. A single life is but one scene in a long journey — such is the view that samsara holds out to us.

Its origins lie in ancient India

The idea of transmigration was nurtured, before Buddhism arose, within the thought of ancient India's Brahmanism and the Upanishads. Notions such as the "doctrine of the five fires and two paths" — that the dead return with the smoke of cremation, fall again as rain, and are reborn — are held to be among its sources.

In time Buddhism inherited this vision of life and death and deepened it in its own way. Yet one great difference stands out. Where Hinduism holds that an unchanging self (atman) passes from life to life, Buddhism teaches "non-self" (anatta): there is no abiding soul as a fixed substance. And yet the continuity of one's deeds is carried onward — this subtle, profound difference marks the Buddhist view of samsara.

The soul's journey through the six realms

In Buddhism, living beings are said to be reborn, according to their deeds, through six worlds: hell, hungry ghosts, beasts, asuras, humans, and heavens — the "six realms." The soul's endless circling through these six is called the "wheel of the six realms."

Which world one is born into was thought to be decided by one's deeds in life — that is, "karma." Good deeds bring a good rebirth; evil deeds, a rebirth of suffering. This idea has worked as a quiet admonition, leading people to look hard at their own conduct.

For more on each of the six realms, see also What Are the Six Realms of Rebirth.

"Liberation," the escape from repetition

Samsara is not an idea that promises a pleasant rebirth. The very repetition of birth and death is said to be a lingering within delusion and suffering, and Buddhism teaches, rather, to aim at escaping this wheel — at "liberation" (gedatsu). The state one reaches, where all suffering is extinguished into peace, is called "nirvana."

To release, somewhere, the suffering that circles without end, and reach a quiet peace. The idea of samsara is at once a romance of rebirth and a deep question: to become free of attachment.

Rebirth as a belief across the world

The notion that the soul is reborn is, in fact, not the East's alone. In ancient Greece, too, Pythagoras and Plato taught "metempsychosis" — that the soul, though the body perishes, passes on to another life.

East and West alike, standing before the question "does everything truly end with death?", people have pictured a story of life that circles on. Samsara is one of the most systematic of those answers, and it is just this that keeps it touching the human heart, across ages and borders, even today.

Yurusen's world, and circling thoughts

Yurusen is an app for filing the person you could not forgive into a quiet ledger whose entries are not shown to other users. Left alone, resentment and bitterness circle through the mind, round and round, like samsara itself. You live the same scene again and again.

To write down those circling thoughts, for now, and set them outside you — that may be your own small "liberation," a step toward putting a little distance between yourself and the wheel of attachment.