The Round of Rebirth

Saṃsāra is the early-Buddhist picture of existence as a continuous round: beings are born, live, die, and are reborn again and again, life after life, driven onward by craving and ignorance. It matters because the whole path aims at release from this wandering — Nibbāna is precisely the end of the round. A familiar touchstone is the spin of a wheel that keeps turning until something finally brings it to rest.