New York: Macmillan, 2004.Ĭoncise, accessible overview of textual traditions relating theory of dependent origination to various paths found represented within Wheel of Life imagery.
“Cosmology.” In Encyclopedia of Buddhism. This work outlining the basic tenets of Tibetan Buddhism for a lay audience includes a section detailing the various components of the Wheel of Life, which is illustrated and diagrammed. The Tantric Mysticism of Tibet: A Practical Guide. In literature, textual references to the Wheel of Life image include fictional works, such as Kipling’s Kim ( Kipling 1901).īlofeld, John. The most comprehensive treatment of the Wheel of Life crossing time and space is Teiser 2006. Blofeld 1974 is one of the earliest works focused on Tibetan Buddhism and the Wheel of Life within a Tibetan ritual framework. Gethin 2004 is a brief survey combining both text and image. One example of such an analysis can be found in Powers 1995. Scholarly considerations of the Wheel of Life are relatively few and have historically been within textual discussions of Buddhism’s theory of dependent origination. The Wheel of Life is mentioned mainly within the broader context of Buddhist belief and less frequently within the realm of Buddhist practice. Mention of “a wheel” is found textually throughout Buddhism, most significantly as a reference to the exposition of the Buddhist teachings (“the turning of the wheel of the law”), but also in other areas more directly connected to actual practice, such as the Tibetan prayer wheel (see Ladner 2000). The other possible rebirths are human, animal, hungry ghost, or hell dweller. The number of paths varies, as some depictions do not separate the asuras (“titans” or “demons”) from the devas (“gods”).
The spokes of the Wheel itself typically show the five or six possibilities for rebirth, both good and bad, dependent upon one’s actions in life. Unlike the Western Judeo-Christian concept of life stopping at death, with the dead then moving on to an eternity in either heaven or hell, Buddhism offers a more cyclical approach to life, one cosmologically more connected to the seasonality of the world in which life flourishes, only to die and be reborn again in the upcoming year, and visually represented in the form of an ever-turning wheel embraced by the Demon of Impermanence. Shengsi (生死), literally, “birth and death,” the Chinese translation of the Buddhist term samsara, emphasizes the linkage of birth, death, and rebirth seen within the Wheel of Life. bhava-cakra)-or, as it is sometimes referred to, the Wheel of Becoming, the Wheel of Existence, the Wheel of Rebirth, or the Wheel of Reincarnation-is a visual representation of the Buddhist notion of death as inseparable from that of birth, portraying in concrete form abstract metaphysical concepts.
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