Leaving samsara

Nirvana is never given in our everyday experience and neither is the means of our escape from samsara. According to the Buddha, in our everyday experience, the only things which are evident are impermanence, suffering and the hard fact that I am not any of this. It is also evident that I am involved in a process from which escape is not apparent. Or, the same, if there is an escape from samsara, I am ignorant of it. But if the message of the Buddha is to mean anything significant for us—more than a description of our finiteness—it has to disclose how we might pull ourselves out of ourselves so that we can abandon our connection with samsara. Only in this way is nirvana revealed to us: when we have surpassed ourselves, in the present while still alive, so as to release our hold on our entire being which began with our birth and ends with our death. In this release, only then do we gain the sphere of immortality and supreme bliss.