"The question came up yesterday about the difference between Mahayana and Theravada.

 The Teaching Of Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

"The question came up yesterday about the difference between Mahayana and Theravada.

And one of the important differences is how they view samsara.

For the Mahayana, samsara is a place. And because it’s a place, if someone does a lot of good, develops a lot of good qualities, and then leaves that place, that person is leaving everybody else in a lurch—which is why they say that the truly generous and compassionate person wants to hang around, doesn’t want to leave samsara. In fact, they define samsara as being identical with nibbana if, they say, you look at it the right way. 

That way the bodhisattva gets to be in samsara and nibbana at the same time.

But the early teachings don’t treat samsara as a place. They treat it as a process.

Samsara literally means “the wandering-on.” 

It’s an activity. A process. 

And you don’t just wander.

You create the worlds that you wander into. 

They involve feeding, and that’s addictive.

So samsara is basically a bad habit, where you have an idea: You’d like to have this kind of pleasure, but no matter what it is, it’s going to cost a certain amount of suffering both for yourself and for other people in the worlds you create around that desire.

This is why stopping the process, stopping the addictive habit, is actually good for yourself and for those others. 

And this is why samsara and nibbana can’t be the same thing, because samsara is an addiction, and you can’t stop the addiction—the stopping is nibbana—while still indulging in it."

~ Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu

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