Samsara
संसार (saṃsāra)
The wandering-on - the cycle of becoming that repeats itself, in lifetimes or in an ordinary afternoon.
Samsara means wandering or flowing on. Cosmologically it names the round of birth and death; psychologically - and the traditions intend both - it names the way experience loops: the same desires producing the same actions producing the same disappointments, with new scenery.
Its signature is repetition without progress. One can be exquisitely busy inside samsara. The wheel does not mind how fast it spins.
Seeing the loop is the first exit. Practice does not begin by escaping the cycle but by noticing it in miniature - the argument you have had a hundred times, the purchase that will fix everything again, the resolution made and unmade each Sunday. Compassion arrives on the same insight, since everyone you meet is turning on some wheel of their own.