Bhavachakra
| Translations of bhavacakra |
|
|---|---|
| English | wheel of life, wheel of cyclic existence, etc. |
| Pali | bhavacakka (Dev: भवचक्क) |
| Sanskrit | bhavacakra (Dev: भवचक्र) |
| Tibetan |
སྲིད་པའི་འཁོར་ལོ་ (Wylie: srid pa'i 'khor lo; THL: sipé khorlo) |
| Glossary of Buddhism | |
The bhavacakra (Sanskrit; Pāli: bhavacakka; Tibetan: srid pa'i 'khor lo) is a symbolic representation of saṃsāra (or cyclic existence). It is found on the outside walls of Tibetan Buddhist temples and monasteries in the Indo-Tibetan region, to help ordinary people understand Buddhist teachings.
Bhavacakra, "wheel of life," consists of the words bhava and cakra.
Bhava (भव) means "being, worldly existence, becoming, birth, be, production, origin".
The Sanskrit word bhāva (भाव) is rooted in the term bhava, and means "emotion, sentiment, state of body or mind, disposition." In some contexts it also means "becoming, being, existing, occurring, appearance" while connoting the condition thereof.
In Buddhism, bhava denotes the continuity of becoming (reincarnating) in one of the realms of existence, in the samsaric context of rebirth, life and the maturation arising therefrom. It is the tenth of the Twelve Nidanas, in its Pratītyasamutpāda doctrine.
The word Chakra (चक्र) derives from the Sanskrit word meaning "wheel," as well as "circle" and "cycle".
The word chakra is used to mean several different things in the Sanskrit sources:
Legend has it that the historical Buddha himself created the first depiction of the bhavacakra, and the story of how he gave the illustration to King Rudrāyaṇa appears in the anthology of Buddhist narratives called the Divyāvadāna.
The bhavacakra is painted on the outside walls of nearly every Tibetan Buddhist temple in Tibet and India, to instruct non-monastic audience about the Buddhist teachings.
The bhavacakra consits of the following elements:
Symbolically, the three inner circles, moving from the center outward, show that the three poisons of ignorance, attachment, and aversion give rise to positive and negative actions; these actions and their results are called karma. Karma in turn gives rise to the six realms, which represent the different types of suffering within samsara.
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