![]() ![]() In the upper left corner is the pure land, and I believe the figure is Amitabha Buddha. So in a pictorial way, what we’re seeing here is that, encircled by the Lord of Death and the four tragedies of birth, old age, sickness and death, we go through this system of the 12 links, taking one rebirth after another in the six realms, sometimes going up, sometimes going down, depending upon ignorance, anger and attachment. ![]() Wheel of Life (Sanskrit: The bhavacakra Tibetan: srid pa’i ‘khor lo). The pig represents ignorance, and what’s coming from it is attachment and anger- attachment being the bird or the chicken, and anger being the snake. In the very center, you have a pig, and in its mouth, it’s holding a chicken and a snake. This shows that some beings are going to lower realms and some beings are being reborn in upper realms. And then the ring inside of that, you have some beings going down and some beings coming up. The next rim in, you’ll see it’s divided into six sections. The outermost rim is a pictorial representation of the 12 links, and I’ll get into explaining all of those next time. ![]() So it shows we’re really caught in this cyclic existence. The four limbs are birth, sickness, old age and death. Yama’s four limbs and fangs hold a wheel, which represents samsara, the five aggregates of body and mind, this thing of taking one rebirth after the next. This big demon-like figure that we see here is the Lord of Death, Yama. If you see that before going into the prayer room, it gives you some energy to concentrate when you’re doing the prayers. This drawing is really explaining samsara or cyclic existence-death, rebirth, death, rebirth, and all the confusion in the middle. This drawing is called the Wheel of Life, and it often appears on the doors to the prayer rooms in the Tibetan monastery. ![]()
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