The rebirth in The AwakeningThe time that Edna spends in the water is a suspension of space and time; this is his first attempt to realize Robert's impermanence. In a strange way, Edna sees herself as an object of meditation, where at the extremity of self-absorption, she should be able to see through her own altruism. “As he swam he seemed to reach the limitless in which to lose himself[emphasis added]” (Chopin 74). Edna has left her earthly existence on the shore and looks forward to a new existence, with the "unlimited," or nirvana, as a tempting prize on the other shore. His mistake is in looking back. When Edna looks back towards the shore, she notices the people she left there. He also notices that he has not traveled a great distance. Then a “swift vision of death struck her soul” (Chopin 74), a sense of death that reaffirms her individuality and reminds her of her attachment to Robert. His meditation is interrupted by the wandering of his mind towards other objects and senses. His struggle to regain the shore becomes a kind of near-death experience, at the end of which comes complete physical exhaustion, a stretching of the physical boundaries of his self. Edna's intellectual self, the mind, another creation of ignorance, also awakens. He begins to "feel like one who gradually awakens from a dream, a delightful, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing upon his soul" (Chopin 78). As Edna's fortified ego washes ashore, her attachment to Robert wanes. strengthened. The intimate moment they share at the end of the chapter reveals a “culmination of bliss,” where “no multitude of words could have been more significant than those moments of silence, or more pregnant than the first throbs of desire” (Chopin 63, 77). After Edna's rebirth from the sea, her sense of self blossoms. He walks away from the crowd and starts doing what he wants. Léonce Pontellier's stern order to return after the bath goes unheeded. Edna realizes that her will is "flared, stubborn and resistant." In Buddhist philosophy, the concept of will is one of the five aggregates that form the self. Edna's recognition of her will is a good indication that her ego is fully formed and that in some sense she has moved further away from achieving nirvana..