In this wheel there are four concentric circles in which the innermost circle has three animals, a cock, a snake, and a pig symbolizing greed, hatred and ignorance respectively. He represents the truth of universal impermanence that is operating every moment. The Wheel of Life contains a very frightening figure called the Yama or Lord of Death holding a wheel in his hands. A lot of this is surely metaphysical but there are various literature which interprets this profound teaching on a psychological level and recently I read a book by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpochay called “ Transcending Madness” which gives us a psychological explanation of the 6 realms and their corresponding bardos or intermediate stages. There is no mention about the Big Bang or how the whole universe came into being, but there is an explanation of how our own inner universe operates. The whole purpose of putting so much effort is to find out where it all began and questions like how it must have been at the time of Big Bang are just waiting to be answered.īut coming back to the story of the Indian King the Buddha gave him a map of how the consciousness goes on and on in this endless cycle of births and deaths, thus providing him an answer as how to end this vicious cycle. They have even gone to the extent of creating a 30 mile long laboratory at the border of Switzerland, called CERN. Science tremendously helps us to reach a point where we can rationalize our existence to some extent. In our busy lives surrounded by work and all the latest gizmos and constant notifications of social media platforms, we do have rare moments of insight where we wonder about the grand scheme of things, about our lives. Then the Buddha seeing this as a wonderful opportunity to impart a teaching drew the Bhavachakra or “ The Wheel of Life”. During that time a great king named King Rudrayana asked the Buddha for spiritual guidance for his kingdom. Just as an elephant in the midst of huts,Ībout 2600 years ago these lines were said by the Buddha. Enter into the teachings of the Enlightened One
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