Samsara

Saṃsāra (Sanskrit: संसार) (in Tibetan called khor ba, pronounced /kɔrwɔ/, meaning "continuous flow"), is the repeating cycle of birth, life and death (reincarnation) as well as one's actions and consequences in the past, present, and future in Hinduism, Buddhism, Bon, Jainism, Taoism and Sikhism.

According to the view of these 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 to this cycle but that it can be ended through perceiving reality. The goal of these religions is to realize this truth, the achievement of which (like ripening of a fruit) is moksha or liberation.

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