Wheel of Life

[tashit...@gmail.com]

WHEEL OF LIFE

By Venerable Acharya Buddharakkhita

 

‘Divyavadana’, a well known Sanskrit work containing biographies of the Buddha and his important immediate disciples, records some interesting accounts about the psychic exploits of Mogallana the Great, one of the two chief disciples of the Buddha. It is said that Maha Mogallana was second only to the Buddha in the mastery of supernormal powers. He was wont to visit the various sub-human and super-human planes of existence, such as the different states of niraya (hell), the realm of the ghosts, etc. Similarly, he visited the various devalokas-devine spheres, and the realms of Brahmas- the radiant high exalted gods. After visiting these realms, he would return and describe to the Buddha and to his brother monks the terrible sufferings which the denizens of the spirit and hell worlds experienced, as well as the blissful life which the heavenly beings enjoyed.

Now it so happened that whenever discontented and rebellious monks troubled  the elder  monks, they invariably brought them to Venerable Mogallana. And he set them right in no time by telling about the miseries of the nether worlds. One day Buddha noticed large congregation of monastic and lay disciples listening to the Venerable Mogallana who was describing the various planes of existence and how beings wandered from life to life driven by power of kamma. Then the Lord told the Venerable Ananda that since the Venerable Mogallana’sdiscourse will not be available to all, a big mural of the wheel of life-bhava chakka, be painted on the entrance of the preaching hall for the benefit of devotees. It was to be a teaching aid.

 

Even today in various Buddhist countries and in monasteries throughout the world this art of depicting the Wheel of Life is not only preserved but actively cultivated and promoted.

Thus at then instance of the Lord Buddha, a great wheel was painted having three distinct circles. The inner circle, or the hub, depicts the three roots of kamma that keep the wheel rotating ad infinitum.

 

The middle circle depicts the six gatis-realms where one is destined to be reborn, such as,  the six types of births- in the hells, in the realm of ghosts, in the animal world, in the realm of demons, in the  human world and in the devine spheres. The six-fold dimensions of existence represent the domain of kamma, that is, where the kammas get worked out.         

 

The outer circle or the, rim, contains, twelve segments representing the twelve links of dependent origination. These links depicts the time succession of the dynamics of kamma; that is, the past, the present and the future lives wrought by kamma.

 

The Wheel of Life is the Wheel of becoming (bhava), endless wandering in the phenomenal existence (samsara). It is a whirling wheel depicting faithfully the whirling cosmos with all its universes, and myriad rungs of evolution. 

In the hub, three animals are painted: the cock in red, representing greed, or lust; the snake in green, representing hate or aversion; and the hog, in black, representing ignorance or delusion .These animals are swallowing each other’s tail, thus forming a ring. The idea behind is that greed, hate and delusion mutually interdependent interpenetrating. When an action is committed, motivate by greed or hatred,  delusion automatically springs up to support, thus keeping the individual mentally blinded as to the consequences of the kamma. As soon as the consequences are visualized, which is what wisdom does, forth with a wrong action is prevented. Delusion is therefore the mother of all evils, since it keeps being in darkness with reference to the nature, consequences and content of evil. It is these three roots of evil, by setting in motion a kammic process, whirl the wheel of wandering in samsara on and on.

 

The middle circle represents the domains of existence [gati]. The bottom centre is the hell, flanked on the left side by the animal world and on the right side by realm of ghosts. The top centre represents the heavenly worlds, flanked on the left by human world and on the right by the realm of the titans or demons.

 

Of these six domains of phenomenal existence, four are known as duggatis – the state  

of woe, the other two – the realms of  the human being and gods , are called  the Sugatis

-the state of happiness. In the Dugatis – being are born to suffer consequences of evil kammas committed earlier. And in the Sugatis, being are born to enjoy well –being and

to get an opportunity for further spiritual evolution, as consequences of good kammas done earlier. Beings bon in Asura loka, titans or demons, are constantly struggling and warring, filled as they are, with violent passion for power and other psychic abilities. It is said that even fight with ideas for supremacy but only to be defeated. The ghosts lead a most wretched life of hunger, thirst and discomforts of various kinds, filled as they are with tremendous greed. It is said that ghosts have huge bloated belies and mouths that are no bigger than the eye of a needle, and extremely slender necks.

 

The illustrations given in the various gatis in the Wheel of Life, are indeed telling. The Asuras are constantly and are oppressed by humiliation from defeat and thwarted ambition. The ego drives and the power-mongering traits are pronounced, born of the three roots of kammadepicted in the central circle.  They have no peace or respite from their ceaseless strife and toil.

 

The ghosts are so pitiably portrayed, that to any casual onlooker it conjures up a sense of fear and disgust at their plight. It is said that they have to endure tremendous torments, e.g. they find the moon hot in summer and, the sun cold in winter, the rivers turn dry as they look at them when thirsty, a thick forest becomes barren as they seek shelter therein, whatever little food hey manage to get, turns in to swords knives and splinters in their bellies and all these because of avarice and greed indulged in earlier. 

 

The picture of the animal world is equally gory with killing and swallowing each other with constant fear and insecurity. There is indeed no recompense. Animals suffer not only because of the mutual slaying without remorse and antagonism, but because they are, in turn, the object of other’s avarice and greed. They are slain for meat, bone or hide, or because they produce fur or wool, silk, pearl or musk; and then there are animals who slog for men with iron hooks and straps around, receiving whips and blows in the bargain; and who pray, can describe the intense sufferings of animals caged in the laboratories, as specimens of vivisection, to produce knowledge for men, and those that are caged in zoos and circuses for men’s merriment! These grisly tales of the animal world only illustrate the fate that ravenous desire and voluptuary create.

 

The hell in Buddhist cosmology is not the permanent state that Semitic theory makes out. The horrors depicted in the illustration are hair-raising and dreadful enough to pale any concentration camp into insignificance. The denizens of hell are ripped apart, mangled, devoured by titanic maggots, spiked a thousand times and tortured in myriad ways.

 

The unmitigated torments of hell, it is said, have no interval. And yet, when the kammas of sheer wickedness, diabolic depravity and satanic savagery, are exhausted, the wraiths of   hell do find a respite and a chance to evolve again, may be in a better plane, even in the human world, as do the Asuras Ghosts or the animals.

 

Beings born in the Dugati, it is said, are caught in the net of woe, in a way that it becomes very difficult for them to get out of it. That is why birth in the human plane is considered a rare gain. Once a being finds an access into the Sugati, he has opportunities to evolve.

 

In the illustration, human beings are shown to be happy, because, while engaged in the various avocations, they at hand a temple symbolizing the means of spiritual development. But human beings could also be depraved. Therefore they are reminded by Lord Buddha, not to debase a gem studded golden bowl by pouring into it vomit, urine and dung, meaning that the human state is like a gem studded golden bowl, and let not this beautiful opportunity be despoiled by avarice and aversion, attachment and delusion.

 

Unlike the beings in the Dugati who are deficient in ‘merit’, human beings are endowed with merit, and therefore, can find protection on their own. ‘Punya’ or merit renders the human state into an instrument for gaining spiritual liberation. Hence, the Buddha’s emphasis that “Let not this precious opportunity of finding access in the Sugati, as a human being be destroyed by desire!”

 

If one’s clothes are on fire, one hastily pus it off. Likewise, should desires be put off whenever they arise in the human heart. For, polluted by desire, the human mind can degenerate, sp as to fall into any of the aforementioned states in Dugati.

 

The heavenly realms are many. There are the Kamavacaragods and the Brahmas, the radiant high divinities of Form and Formless Realms. In the illustration of the Wheel of Life different types of divine mansions are depicted to show the various celestial planes.

 

The divine beings are totally freed from the pain and anxiety as evident in the lower planes. They live on merit. Hence, their blissful existence! They live an immensely long life, going into astronomical figures, not of years but of kalpas-aeons. And an aeon is an immense duration of time, which cannot be computed in terms of mere years.

 

But this blissful state of existence, too, is impermanent. Just as the hells are not permanent states of torture, even so, the heavenly realms are not eternal states of bliss. Specially, if the devas get angry, or their minds are polluted otherwise, they either fall into the Asura loka and remain there, or are reborn elsewhere. Just as a rogue elephant lives in the forest, all by himself threatening others, even so, the fallen god lives among the demons. A defiled mind cannot hold a being in that rarified and sublime state of the devas. When the kammas or the merits, or both are exhausted, the devas are reborn in other planes of existence.

 

Therefore, the heavenly states, though very blissful, does not constitute the Summum Bonum-the ultimate of perfection in Buddhism. But it is definitely a very elevating condition, and a being, seriously pursuing path of Dhamma, can derive a great benefit from being a devaand progress into the transcendental dimension of freedom-Nibbana. It is to be understood, however, that whosoever fails to take advantage of the celestial realms, could and up miserably. For, exactly in proportion to the bliss enjoyed there is the anticlimactic agony occasioned by the fall or death there from.

 

It is said that all of these domains of existence, where kammas are acquired and their consequences worked out, the human plane is about the best, spiritually. And why? Because, of its mixed blessings of pain and pleasure.

 

Again it is here that the Buddhas are born to attain the summit of spirituality, to discover and declare the ultimate truth, to benefit all beings, in all realms, and at all times. Though born in human spheres, the Buddhas, by virtue of their spiritual excellence and exalted attainments, become the Supreme Masters of all, including the highest Brahma gods.

 

Because of the relatively transient existence, the human beings can discern anicca-impermanence and changefulness, dukkha-unsatisfactoriness and suffering, and anatta- insubstantiality and conditionality, the three cardinal actualities that characterize phenomenal existence. The devas live long, and so blissfully, that they can’t see the truths of impermanence, sufferings and insubstantiality. Neither do the beings in the dugatisrealize these actualities, prepossessed as they are with pain and distress.

 

It should be interesting to note that birth in these various realms means not only happiness or misery but also together varies perceptions. And it is said in the commentarial literature, a pitcher full of water means entirely different things to different beings. While it is nectar to the celestial beings, it is plain water to human beings, and to the hungry ghosts it is a container full of blood and pus; similarly to the nagas and the fish, it is just the right environment wherein to live, and to the Brahmas of the formless sphere of infinite space, it is empty space! Likewise, anything, animate or inanimate, subjective or objective, is different to different beings, in consequence of their kammas.

 

The twelve links of Dependent Origination, depicted in the outer circle, constitute a pictorial portrayal of the dynamics of kamma, in terms of three successive lives, i.e., the past, the present and the future, comprehending thus, the totality of time. Time in reality is fiction. It exists, only relation to motion. And since existence, in all its forms, is intensely dynamic as is clear from the transitoriness of all phenomena, time acquires a relative actuality. It validates, at any rate, the truth, of continuous creation, in terms of the chain of causal and conditional relations-Paticca-Samuppadda.

 

                      

The twelve links (nidanas) are pictorially depicted, as in the case of the (gatis), in order to make clear the working of the causal chain. Ignorance, the first link, is represented by a blind woman; Old and infirm, supported by a stick, groping about. She is led by a boy.

 

Ignorance is mental blindness. When the mind is seized with ignorance, it does not know things as they really are, but mistakes the essential to be non-essential and the non- essential to be essential, the real to be unreal and the true to be false and vice-versa.

Groping in the mental wilderness of fancies and delusions, the ignorant mind distorts the truth about things and holds on to perverted ideologies and beliefs- upholding the impermanent to be permanent, suffering to be happiness, the non-self to be self or soul, and the ugly to be beautiful.

 

Mental blindness, therefore, is not only unknowing but also knowing wrongly and inadequately, as is so tellingly portrayed by the symbol of the old woman. Ignorance does not go alone, it is accompanied by bhava tanha- the drive, otherwise called craving, that seeks the continuity of existence. That is why a boy is shown leading the woman.

 

 Now, the formula of Dependent Origination says that dependent on ignorance, volitional activities arise; that is due to ignorance, a kamma, in deed, word and thoughts, is produced.

 

Here the relation between the two is that of cause and effect, i.e., when ignorance obtains, one is motivated to commit volitional actions- actions that are deliberately, intentionally or willfully performed as distinct from an unintentional or mechanical action.

 

Volitional action, the second link, has been shown as a potter engaged in turning out a variety of products, some very beautiful, others substandard, representing the two basic categories of action, viz., kusala kamma- wholesome, skillful, good or meritorious action and akusala kamma- unwholesome, unskillful, evil or de-meritorious action. Here then one finds ignorance mothering willed-actions that have the potency to establish time-succession by producing results in future. These two links constitute the active or productive aspect of personality; therefore, they are joined by other three productive links, which are tanha- craving, upadana- clinging, and bhava- becoming (8,9,10 links to be explained later).

 

Dependent on volitional activities, relinking consciousness arises. By relinking consciousness is meant that consciousness which arises at the moment of conception, that is, as the first thought moment of the present life.

 

It is depicted as a monkey which leaping on to a fruit-bearing tree from another, devours the fruits, alluding thereby to a state that amounts to the experiencing of a consequence-the enjoyment of the fruit of a past kamma. The leaping analogy is very apt, in the sense that on the cessation of the past life, the potential or residual kammicenergy, “leaps” so to say, in to a new vehicle, that is, into a fresh life process.     The relinking consciousness is therefore, a vipaka a resultant type of consciousness. It is produced, and is not itself productive. It is a passive condition and not an active one.

 

The mechanism of rebirth is an extremely complex condition. It is not by the mere interaction of the ovum and the sperm that rebirth is brought about, unless the karmic energy, known as gandhabba in pali-‘being’ is available with the right time and space synchronicity. That is to say just the right moment when the physical base is being provided by the parents, as well as the environmental and social possibilities to fit in with the being’s kamma-potentials, that rebirth occurs. Therefore, it is very explicitly said in the Pali Canon, that when the mother’s time is ripe, and when the mother and the father meet, and the sperm is deposited in the womb, and the ‘being with drive to leap, to take rebirth, at that particular time and in that environment providing the right conditions for its evolution, is present, then does rebirth take place.

 

Relinking consciousness, thus, is the crystallization of new process of life. It inaugurates, so to say, a new state of existence, carrying with in the potential of the entire past.

 

Dependent upon relinking consciousness, mind-body aggregation arises. Though causal, it is a coeval relation in the sense that a synthesis of psychological factors is occasioned co-nascently, with the arising of the past consciousness in a given state of existence. The symbol used to depict this link is a boat being rowed by man with a few passengers across swift currents. While the boat symbolizes the corporeal basis – the body, the boat-man and passengers represent the mind which is a compound of feelings (vedana), perceptions (sanna), mental formations (sankhara) and consciousness (vinnana). Consciousness is the boatman proper in this analogy. The swirling currents represent the perilous and unstable world through which life should plod across.

 

With the arising of this psycho-physical combination, the six sense faculties too are established; hence, the phrase, dependent on mind-body, the six sense base arise.

 

A base- Ayatana, is a sphere, or an  ‘access’ or ‘door’. Therefore, the six sense bases are depicted as house with six windows. These are the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind bases. The eye as a base is a condition that harbours the ‘consciousness’; it is where the consciousness, so to say, must be based. The eye is also a ‘door’ (or a window), that is, an access, for the objects to be ‘received’, in this case, the sights or visible objects to be ushered in, constitute the eye-consciousness. When food is ushered into the mouth, through metabolism it is converted into the body itself. Similarly when visible object is ushered in, as it were, into the eye, through the psychic metabolism known as five-door-advertence (pancavaravajjana), it is converted into eye consciousness. It is the same with the five other senses.        

Dependent upon the six sense bases, contact (phasso) the sixth sense arises. By contact is meant the meeting of the subjective and objective factors, that is to say, the meeting of the eye with sight, ear with sound, nose with smell, tongue with taste, touch with tangibles and mind with mental objects, ideas and concepts.

 

It is depicted as a man and woman in embrace, an explicit analogy, to emphasize what is called the ‘made for each other impact’. The arising of consciousness as earlier mentioned, such the eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, etc., comes about through the instrumentality of contact. It is contact, which ‘ushers in’ the external object.

Dependent upon contact, feeling (vedana) arises, this seventh link is represented by an arrow piercing the eye, a vivid illustration to drive home the immediate and sharp impact, something like a shock, that it imparts into personality. It is an emotional response to the contact between sense and its object. Vedana is meeting-ground, between the mind and matter. This it plays a very important role. It rouses active interest of the mind in the form of craving, and thereby introduces a new productive activity. From relinking consciousness up to feeling, these five links (3,4,5,6 and 7), are all resultants (vipaka), the passive aspect of personality. They are predicted by the first two links. Thus the first five links stand for the present life, in consequence of the past life, as an endowment, that is.

Depending on feeling craving arises. Craving is depicted as a boozer lost in drinking bout and a woman supplying the drinks. Boozer is the symbol of insatiability and thirst that characterize kamma. Craving is an active volitional action and it is invariably supported by ignorance, even as the boozer by the woman.

Depending on craving, clinging arises. It is due to craving that one grasps what is craved, i.e. one gets attached. That is why clinging is depicted by a man feverishly plucking fruits from a tree and trying to fill a basket that is already full. Clinging thus, signifies an intensification and multiplication of craving.

This craving, in extensor, now brings about Becoming. Because, what you grasp, that you have. And what you crave for and cling to, that you become, i.e. with that you are you are impregnated. Hence, the very striking simile of a pregnant woman!  Though the child is not born, not visible as yet, nonetheless, it has arrived, it has conceived, it is on the way, it is only matter of time when the parturition brings it to the world. Similarly, once craving arises, and kamma is thus performed, the consequence thereof is already wrought, it is only a matter of time when its actualization is accomplished.

   

Thus the three links (8, 9 and 10) of craving, clinging and becoming, conjoined with ignorance and volitional activity constitute the active aspect of present life. It is a vicious circle that is so worked out by the insidious hands, not of destiny, providence or a creator god, but of the implacable law of Moral Causation-kamma.

 

Dependent on becoming, birth arises. Birth is depicted by the picture of childbirth;  a painful, if not loathsome, and an utterly helpless process. This refers to rebirth into the future, as the passive endowment of life [represented by the five links 3,4,5,6, and 7].

 

The active process of kamma, [represented by the links 8,9 and 10] in turn, fashions the future,  even as the seed contains the fruit that is to come in due course Likewise, bhava (becoming), now unfolds itself in the form of birth in a new state of existence. 

 

Dependent on birth old age and a whole chain of infirmity, death, sorrow, lamentation lain, depression and despair arise.

 

Old age has been depicted very appropriately by an old man, carrying a corpse. Just as pregnant woman already carries the child, so does the old man carry death. The mass of suffering (Dukkhakhanda), as expressed by the terms sorrow etc., that is intrinsic in life, has been spelt out in the incoming existence, by way of the last two links (11 and 12) which naturally stand for the five links, expressing the passive aspect of the personality in the present life.

 

Here, the, we get the Wheel of Life in twenty propositions, like so many spokes of the wheel;  the five active aspects of the past, condition the five passive aspects of the present, which condition the five passive of the future. And so the vicious circle, called the Wheel of Life, whirls on and on, ad infinitum, until by the deft intervention, of the Dhamma of the Buddha which bring about deliverance to those that may aspire to break this circle, by using its own force, only in reverse!