Today I feel for going a little into Tibetan Buddhism. This picture can be found in tons of monasteries in Bhutan. It is called the Wheel of Life (sidkhor). It is made to remind people how suffering is created and the cause-effect of certain behaviours. 1. In the center there are three animals representing the three main mind poisons (nyoenmong dugsum): a) Ignorance (pig), b) Hatred (snake) and c) Desire (bird). These poisons create suffering and are considered to be the roots to all sufferings. Everything starts from ignorance - and actually both anger and desire stem from ignorance. Ignorance doesnt only mean that one is unable to understand the nature of suffering, how suffering is created and how one can stop suffering, but also actively constructing misconceptions about reality, making oneself unable to differentiate real things from own fabrications and illusions..Ignorance starts from disconnecting oneself from the world, making ones ego special, separating I from they. As a result we start to separate things and group them into categories that we like and categories that we dislike and thos build up desire and hate. Hatred includes annoyance, aversion and anger. It creates suffering in our mind and hurts other people. Desire includes attachment, lust and clinging. The desire also leads to suffering: we suffer when we are not able to get what we want; when we are losing things that we love, etc. . So why those particular animals, the pig the snake and the bird? Actually the animals in the picture are not to be taken literally. The pig is considered ignorant since it likes to stay in the mud and eat anything that comes in its mouth. The bird actually represents particular birds from India that are very attached to eachother. The snake will attack even at smallest approach. 2. The next layer in the picture shows the two paths (lam nyi). The white half circle - the white road (lam karpo) - shows people improving their karma and climbing up. The black half - the black road (lam nagpo) - shows people going down to lower realms. We always have a choice in our actions. There is both positive and negative actions, as well as neutral (ignoring action) 3. The next layer shows the six realms (Samsara/Sentient Beings of the Six Realms/ drowa rigdrug). Although very interesting, with realms like the hungry ghost etc. it has to wait until next post!
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 13:18:59 +0000
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