SuttaCentral
What did the Buddha mean in this segment?
“This transmigration has no known beginning…This is quite enough for you to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed regarding all conditions”
Why, according to him, knowing the uncertain beginning of transmigration makes you free from all those conditions?
You’re answers are appreciated.
Hi,
This is a question asking for an interpretation.
FWIW, I’d offer that the Buddha is pointing to how long beings have experienced dukkha, suffering. When this is recognized deeply, the natural inclination of the mind is to become free of the duress.
Hence, “This is quite enough for you to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed regarding all conditions.”
It’s not so much about exactly how long this has been going on, or even if it’s been infinitely long, (notice how the Buddha does not specify the length of time or infinity. He says the duration is indiscernible, “Anamataggoyaṁ, bhikkhu, saṁsāro..” A more empiric reply…).
If you were in a place where for years and years there was conflict, disease and crime….would you wish to escape? If so, “This is quite enough for you to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed regarding all conditions”
All best
People love freedom. So slaves in most cases want to become free. Buddha simply says that your samsaric enslavement has no beginning.
Now, one of aspect of ignorance is attavada. So Buddha teaches that
All sankharas are impermanent
All sankharas are suffering
All things are not self.
Understanding of impermanence or sankharas leads to abandoning of attavada. Abandoning of attavada practically means liberation from infinite samsaric bondage since for sotāpanna the possibility of further rebirth is limited to 7 existences at most.
I think, Buddha isn’t saying mere knowledge of an ancient fact frees us from suffering. He’s using the scale of beginningless samsara to mature disenchantment with all conditioned phenomena, more like igniting spiritual urgency (dharma samvega).
If we’ve wandered this long, then postponing practice is unwise. Dispassion becomes attractive, not repulsive or gloomy.
Seeing samsara as beginningless breaks faith in conditioned fixes, shifts focus to ending craving now, also loosens identity-view, deepens disenchantment with all sankharas, and encourages urgent practice → which supports dispassion and release.
maybe thats why knowing uncertainty makes one free..
I understand that this question is already solved. I just want to share my reflection on this one. It reminds me of a scene in a movie where a heroine discovered a mass amount of her corpses (which are actually her clones). So it was revealed that she was just another clone going through a cruel experiment without leaving any memory traces of the previous clones.
Let’s leave out any sidenote about clones or cruel experiments or movie or games. So, in this sutta, it appears to me that I am looking at a mountain of my corpses without the psychic ability to remember my past experiment, however I still know that those corpses are mine and they were all in vain.
All the past struggles to conquer, to acquire and to extract any pleasure or any good out of samsara were all having one and only same result: lying corpses at the end.
It gives out these senses of “I don’t want this anymore” because “there is nothing more to it that I might haven’t tried” and so “I have had enough of this”.
Then, this also gives out a sense that due to that mountain of corpses, the fact is clear to me “I am still here because so far I haven’t done anything differently so the results are all the same!”
Now I want a different result! An escape that never returns to this mess.