Samsara

-

-

Samsara is a Sanskrit word that means “the ever turning wheel of life” and is the point of departure for the filmmakers as they search for the elusive current of interconnection that runs through our lives. Shot in 70mm film, over a period of almost five years, in twenty-five countries.

Samsara transports us to sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial sites, and natural wonders. Without dialogue or descriptive text, Samsara subverts our expectations of a traditional documentary, instead encouraging our own inner interpretations inspired by images and music that infuses the ancient with the modern.

In popular use, Samsara [a westernized spelling] may refer to the world (in the sense of the various worldly activities which occupy ordinary human beings), the various sufferings thereof; or the unsettled and agitated mind through which reality is perceived.

-

Saṃsāra or Sangsāra (Sanskrit: संसार) (in Tibetan called ‘khor ba, meaning “continuous flow”), is the repeating cycle of birth, life and death (reincarnation) within Hinduism, Buddhism, Bön, Jainism, Taoism, and Yârsân. In Sikhism this concept is slightly different and looks at one’s actions in the present and consequences in the present.

The origins of the notion of reincarnation are obscure. They apparently date to the Iron Age (around 1200 BCE). Discussion of the subject appears in the philosophical traditions of India (including the Indus Valley) and Greece (including Asia Minor) from about the 6th century BCE. Also during the Iron Age, the Greek Pre-Socratics discussed reincarnation, and the Celtic Druids are also reported to have taught a doctrine of reincarnation.

The ideas associated with reincarnation may have arisen independently in different regions, or they might have spread as a result of cultural contact. Proponents of cultural transmission have looked for links between Iron Age Celtic, Greek and Vedic philosophy and religion, some even suggesting that belief in reincarnation was present in Proto-Indo-European religion.

In ancient European, Iranian and Indian agricultural cultures, the life cycles of birth, death, and rebirth were recognized as a replica of natural agricultural cycles.

Patrick Olivelle asserts that the origin of the concept of the cycle of birth and death, the concept of samsara, and the concept of liberation in the Indian tradition, were in part the creation of the non-Vedic Shramana (Sanskrit: श्रमण Śramaṇa; Pali: समण samaṇa) tradition.

Sramana was a non-Vedic Indian religious movement parallel to but separate from the historical Vedic religion. The Śramaṇa tradition gave rise to Yoga, Jainism, Buddhism, and some nāstika schools of Hinduism such as Cārvāka and Ājīvika, and also popular concepts in all major Indian religions such as saṃsāra (the cycle of birth and death) and moksha (liberation from that cycle).

The Pāli samaṇa and the Sanskrit Śramaṇa refer to renunciate ascetic traditions from the middle of the 1st millennium BCE. They were individual, experiential and free-form traditions, independent of society; and in religious competition with Brahmin priests, who as opposed to Śramaṇas, stressed mastery of texts and performing rituals.

The Pāli samaṇa and the Sanskrit Śramaṇa are postulated to be derived from the verbal root śram, meaning “to exert effort, labor or to perform austerity”. “Śramaṇa” thus means “one who strives” or “laborer” in Sanskrit and Pali. The term was applied to those who wholeheartedly practiced toward enlightenment, and was used for monks.

The Śramaṇa traditions are best captured in the term parivrajaka, meaning a homeless wanderer. The history of wandering monks in ancient India is partly untraceable. The term ‘parivrajaka’ was perhaps applicable to all the peripatetic monks of India.

Reincarnation is the religious or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after biological death, begins a new life in a new body that may be human, animal or spiritual depending on the moral quality of the previous life’s actions. This doctrine is a central tenet of the Indian religions.

It is also a common belief of various ancient and modern religions such as Spiritism, Theosophy, and Eckankar and is found in many tribal societies around the world, in places such as Siberia, West Africa, North America, and Australia.

Although the majority of sects within the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Kabbalah, the Cathars, the Druze and the Rosicrucians.

The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism and Gnosticism of the Roman era, as well as the Indian religions, has been the subject of recent scholarly research.

In recent decades, many Europeans and North Americans have developed an interest in reincarnation. Contemporary films, books, and popular songs frequently mention reincarnation. In the last decades, academic researchers have begun to explore reincarnation and published reports of children’s memories of earlier lives in peer-reviewed journals and books.

The historical origins of a concept of a cycle of repeated reincarnation are obscure but the idea appears frequently in religious and philosophical texts in both India and ancient Greece during the middle of the first millennium BC. Orphism, Platonism, Jainism and Buddhism all discuss the transmigration of beings from one life to another.

The concept of reincarnation is present even in the early Vedic texts such as the Rig Veda, but the concise idea of it is said to have originated from the Shramana traditions. Several scholars believe that reincarnation was adopted from this religious culture by Brahmin orthodoxy, and Brahmins first wrote down scriptures containing these ideas in the early (Aitereya) Upanishads.

According to the view of these Asian religions a person’s current life is only one of many -stretching back before birth into past existences and reaching forward beyond death into future incarnations. During the course of each life the quality of the actions (karma) performed determine the future destiny of each person.

The Buddha taught that there is no beginning or end to this cycle. The goal of these Asian religions is to realize this truth, the achievement of which (like ripening of a fruit) is moksha.