Nibbāna === saṃsāra?

Thank you for the offer/idea “Nibbāna === Saṃsāra” but sorry I got too overwhelm of suffering to even entertain such an idea.

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The suttas are not a homogenous collection, so we have different conceptualizations or definitions of nibbana that are at times contradictory.

In some suttas, nibbana is an actual sphere or place the mind can go to, a state of consciousness to be accessed. In other suttas, nibbana is not a place so much as it the cessation of passion, greed, aversion, and delusion. Some suttas suggest consciousness or things like perception and feeling cease with nibbana while others strongly disagree.

For those who equate nibbana with samsara, it is more a deduction of sorts. If we look upon impermanent, dependently originated and selfless dhammas/phenomena and begin to crave them, name them, cognize them, identify with them, identify them as separate, treat them as having essences or selves, then we are in samsara. When we look upon impermanent, dependently originated and selfless dhamas and don’t do those things, it is nibbana. That is one explanation of the view of those who equate nibbana and samsara.

What’s the same or identical in both these cases are the impermanent, dependently originated and selfless dhammas/phenomena. In that sense, nibbana and samsara are referring to the same thing. But samsara has the extra baggage so to speak.

I am not saying I hold/not hold this view, but this is how it was once explained to me.

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