Two important Buddhist terms are Samsara and Nirvana. Samsara is the state without liberation, Nirvana the liberated one. One could think they were two different places or worlds, but they are only different in the way things are experienced. Place and time can very well be identical.

Not to be enlightened means, separating a “me” from a “you”and from the action that results from this separation. We have been in this state of duality since time without beginning. The cause for this way of perception is the fundamental ignorance of mind. Our mind works like an eye, that looks at the outside, but cannot see itself. From ignorance arises the separation between me and you, outside and inside, here and there. As a result, we wish to have certain things we experience as separate from ourselves – attachment arises – and we wish to avoid certain things – aversion arises. From attachment then arises greed, from aversion jealousy, and from ignorance pride. Now, these five disturbing emotions make us say and do certain things. Because of the law of cause and effect  (Karma) our actions come back to us later, and due to our habits, we again and again act motivated by the disturbing emotions. Thus, we find ourselves in Samsara and we cannot escape from conceptual feeling and thinking.

Depending on the predominant disturbing emotion, after death we are reborn in one of the six realms of existence:

1. Pride leads to rebirth in the realm of the gods. They are well off; they live very long and have but a single problem: impermanence. Someday their pleasant state is over, actually, when their good Karma is used up.
2. Jealousy leads into the realm of the demi-gods. They are also relatively well off, but they are permanently jealous of everything the gods have, and they try to take their riches from them.
3. Craving leads to a rebirth as a human being. Humans have a mixed Karma. They experience the sufferings of birth, illness, old age and death, but depending on their Karma they also have surplus energy and compassion.
4. Ignorance leads to a rebirth as an animal. Animals eat other animals or are eaten by them.
5. Avarice leads into the realm of the hungry ghosts. These beings suffer indescribably. They experience themselves as having huge bellies and a tiny, thin throat, so they cannot eat or drink anything.
6. Finally, anger leads to rebirth in the paranoia realms, resp. in the realm of hell beings. These beings suffer even more. They experience being cooked or freezing to death, continuously.

We can find these six realms in our human world as well, the gods' realm e.g. in villas of wealthy people or the paranoia realm in psychiatric hospitals. The realms are not mere metaphors, though, but they become manifest after death depending on the predominant impressions in mind. None of the six worlds has a higher reality – they all are projections of the beings that share the experience of a certain Karma. Our human and animal realm is a kind of shared dream as well, just as real or unreal as the paranoia worlds or the realms of the gods for the beings staying there.

The human realm of existence is especially well suited for following the Buddhist path and becoming enlightened. This is due to the fact, that gods and demi-gods are too well off to wish for changing and animals, hungry ghosts, and hell beings are too badly off, to be able to learn or develop. Thus, in Samsara we are in a cycle of existence, as Buddha said. At times, the wheel turns upwards and then down again. At times, we are better of and at times worse. We are “caught” in Samsara. We experience these states as real, although, according to Buddhist teachings, they lack reality.
Our problem is, taking everything for real existent and clinging to it or rejecting it. The Buddhist path shows, how to realize the true nature of mind and freeing yourself from Samsara.