The Wheel of Life (Bhavachakra): What the Great Wheel Means
On the walls of Tibetan Buddhist temples and monasteries across the Indo-Tibetan region, you will often find one striking image: a great wheel, gripped by a fierce figure, with a small Buddha standing to one side pointing at the moon. This is the bhavachakra, or Wheel of Life, and according to Wikipedia it is a visual teaching aid and meditation tool that symbolically represents samsara, the cycle of existence. It is also one of the classic subjects of thangka painting, the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of painting on cotton or silk.
Here is what the parts of the wheel mean, layer by layer.
The hub: three animals, three poisons
At the very centre of the wheel sit three animals: a pig, a snake and a bird. Wikipedia describes them as representing the three poisons at the core of the whole cycle: ignorance (the pig), aversion or anger (the snake, ready to strike at the slightest touch), and attachment or desire (the bird). In many versions of the painting, the snake and bird emerge from the pig's mouth and grasp its tail in turn, a way of showing that aversion and attachment arise from ignorance and feed back into it.
The second layer: karma
Moving outward, the next ring is split into a light half and a dark half. The light half shows contented people moving upward toward higher states; the dark half shows people in misery being led downward. According to Wikipedia, these two halves represent karma, the law of cause and effect: positive actions lead upward, negative actions lead downward.
The third layer: the six realms
The large middle band of the wheel is divided into six sections, the six realms of samsara. The three higher realms appear in the top half: the god realm, the demi-god realm and the human realm. The three lower realms fill the bottom: the animal realm, the hungry ghost realm and the hell realm. Wikipedia notes that the human realm is considered the most suitable for practicing the dharma, because humans are neither as distracted by pleasure as the gods nor as crushed by pain as beings in the lower realms. In some paintings, a buddha or bodhisattva appears inside each realm, helping the beings there find their way out.
The outer rim: twelve links
The outermost rim of the wheel is divided into twelve scenes representing the Twelve Nidanas, the twelve links of dependent origination. Where the inner layers show the broad pattern (poisons produce karma, karma produces the realms), Wikipedia explains that the twelve links set out that process of cause and effect in detail, and that they can be read two ways: as operating across lifetimes, or as operating in every moment of existence.
The figure holding the wheel, and the moon
The fierce being who grips the entire wheel in its claws and teeth is Yama, the lord of death, and Wikipedia gives the figure a double meaning: it represents impermanence, the fact that the whole cycle is transient and constantly changing. Above the wheel shines the moon, representing liberation from samsara. The Buddha stands outside the wheel pointing at it, indicating that liberation is possible.
A subject made for thangka
Wikipedia's article on thangka lists the Wheel of Life as one of the tradition's recurring subjects, a visual representation of the Abhidharma teachings. Thangkas themselves are paintings on cotton or silk, traditionally kept unframed and rolled when not displayed, and most were intended for personal meditation or the instruction of monastic students. The wheel's layered structure, full of small scenes and figures, suits the thangka format exactly.
The store's own listing for its Wheel of Life thangka adds that the painting can be read on several levels: as a diagram of the six kinds of existence, as a picture of the realms people inhabit according to their character and circumstances, or as a description of the states of mind a person passes through in the course of a single day. That is the listing's reading, and it fits the way the image has long been used as a teaching tool.
The Wheel of Life at Durbar Square
Durbar Square carries a handpainted Bhavachakra Wheel of Life Thangka, rendered in vegetable colour and gold paint on cotton canvas according to its listing. In the painting, a dark wrathful figure holds the wheel above the waters, the three animals of the hub are clearly visible at the centre, and small buddhas preside over the upper corners. You can browse it alongside the store's other paintings in the thangka collection.
