xistence is occasionally painful but that all beings; humans, animals, ghosts, hell-
             beings, even the gods in the heavens; are caught up in samsara, a cycle of rebirth, a maze of
             suffering in which their actions, or karma, keep them wandering (Coomaraswamy 53).
             Samsara and karma are not doctrines specific to Buddhism. The Buddha, however,
             specified that samsara is characterized by three marks: suffering, impermanence, and no-
             self, or anatman. Individuals not only suffer in a constantly changing world, but what
             appears to be the self, the soul, has no independent reality apart from its many
             ...