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Wheel of life

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) found on the outside walls of Tibetan Buddhist temples and monasteries in the Indo-Tibetan region. In the Mahayana Buddhism, it is believed that the drawing was designed by the Buddha himself in order to help ordinary people understand Buddhist teachings.

The bhavacakra is popularly referred to as the wheel of life, and may also be glossed as wheel of cyclic existence or wheel of becoming.

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.Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche states:

One of the reasons why the Wheel of Life was painted outside the monasteries and on the walls (and was really encouraged even by the Buddha himself) was to teach this very profound Buddhist philosophy of life and perception to more simple-minded farmers or cowherds. So these images on the Wheel of Life are just to communicate to the general audience.

The meanings of the main parts of the diagram are:

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.

The fourth and outer layer of the wheel symbolizes the twelve links of dependent origination; these links indicate how the sources of suffering—the three poisons and karma—produce lives within cyclic existence.

The fierce being holding the wheel represents impermanence; this symbolizes that the entire process of samsara or cyclic existence is impermanent, transient, constantly changing. The moon above the wheel indicates liberation. The Buddha is pointing to the moon, indicating that liberation from samsara is possible.


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Wikipedia

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