The bhavachakra, “wheel of becoming,” is painted at the entrance of most Tibetan monasteries, usually on the wall of the porch so that it is the first thing seen on the way in and the last on the way out. It is the most complete visual summary of Buddhist doctrine ever devised: dependent origination, karma, the six realms, the three poisons, and the possibility of release, in a single image.

The tradition traces it to the Buddha himself. The Divyavadana reports that he instructed that such a wheel be painted at the gate of a monastery, with verses beneath it, so that visitors could understand the teaching without a teacher present. Whatever its origin, it has been doing exactly that job for a very long time.

Reading it from the centre out #

The wheel has four concentric zones, held by a figure, with two additional elements outside.

The hub: the three poisons #

At the centre are three animals, each biting the tail of the next in a closed circle:

  • A pig — ignorance or delusion (moha)
  • A snake — aversion or hatred (dvesha)
  • A bird, usually a cock — greed or attachment (raga)

These are the three roots of unwholesome action, and they are at the hub because everything else in the picture turns on them. In many versions the pig is shown at the base with the other two emerging from its mouth, making the doctrinal point that ignorance is primary and the other two derive from it.

That they bite each other’s tails is the second point: the poisons are mutually reinforcing and self-sustaining. There is no natural end to the cycle from inside.

The second ring: the two paths #

A ring divided into a light half and a dark half.

On the light side, figures move upward, often shown clothed and dignified, sometimes led by a monk or holding onto a white cloth. On the dark side, figures move downward, naked, bound, sometimes dragged by demons.

This is karma as ascent and descent: wholesome action leads to fortunate rebirth, unwholesome action to unfortunate. It is placed immediately outside the poisons because that is the causal order — the poisons produce the action, the action produces the destination.

The third ring: the six realms #

The largest zone, divided into six segments, each depicting one realm.

Usually the gods occupy the top, sometimes with the asuras in an adjacent segment fighting over the wish-fulfilling tree; humans are in the upper portion; animals, hungry ghosts, and hell-beings occupy the lower half, with the hells at the bottom.

A detail worth looking for: in each of the six realms there is a small buddha figure, holding an implement appropriate to that realm’s affliction. A buddha holding a lute in the god realm, to remind the complacent of impermanence; a flaming sword in the asura realm; a begging bowl and staff among humans; a book among animals; food and drink among hungry ghosts; fire and water among hell-beings.

The doctrinal claim is significant: there is no realm the teaching does not reach, and no being beyond its range.

The outermost ring is divided into twelve scenes depicting the twelve links of dependent origination. The images are standard and worth knowing, because they are the same everywhere:

  1. Ignorance — a blind person with a stick
  2. Formations — a potter at a wheel
  3. Consciousness — a monkey, often swinging through a tree or grasping at a window
  4. Name-and-form — people in a boat
  5. Six sense-bases — a house with six windows
  6. Contact — a couple embracing
  7. Feeling — a person with an arrow in the eye
  8. Craving — a person drinking, being offered drink
  9. Clinging — someone picking fruit from a tree
  10. Becoming — a pregnant woman, or a couple
  11. Birth — a woman giving birth
  12. Ageing and death — a corpse being carried to the cremation ground

The rim is on the outside because it is the mechanism: the twelve links are how the process depicted in the inner rings actually runs.

The holder: Yama #

The whole wheel is gripped by a fierce figure — fangs, claws, a crown of skulls, a third eye — usually identified as Yama, lord of death, and sometimes as impermanence itself.

He holds the wheel in his jaws and claws because everything within it is subject to death. He is not a devil and not a judge in this context; he is what the whole of samsara is caught by.

Outside the wheel #

Two elements sit outside Yama’s grasp, and they carry the picture’s entire positive content.

In the upper corner, a buddha figure points at the moon, or at a text, or simply stands. This is the indication that there is something outside the wheel, and a way to it.

In the other corner, often, the moon itself, representing nirvana — or a small scene of a buddha teaching.

Beneath the wheel, traditionally, a verse: begin, go forth, apply yourself to the Buddha’s teaching; overthrow the army of death as an elephant overthrows a reed hut; whoever proceeds diligently in this discipline will abandon birth and make an end of suffering.

Why the image works #

Three things make the bhavachakra unusually effective as a teaching device.

It is causal, not merely descriptive. The arrangement encodes the direction of dependence. Poisons produce action; action produces destination; the twelve links describe the machinery. A student who reads the picture outward has learned the causal structure of the whole doctrine.

It is closed. The wheel is a circle, and the poisons at the hub bite each other. There is no natural exit from inside the picture. This is precisely the point being made about samsara, and it is what makes the small buddha figure outside the rim carry so much weight.

It is honest about the stakes. The hells are painted in full, the gods fall, and Yama has his teeth in the entire thing. The image does not soften the diagnosis in order to be welcoming.

Where it is used #

It is a Tibetan and Himalayan form above all, though versions exist in Indian cave painting — there is a damaged one at Ajanta — and in Chinese, Japanese, and Central Asian art.

Its traditional placement at the monastery entrance reflects its purpose: a teaching for people arriving, including the illiterate and the uninstructed. A monk could take a visitor through the whole of Buddhist doctrine with it in half an hour, which is more or less what the Divyavadana recommends.

In modern practice it is used as a contemplation object, a teaching aid, and a check on one’s own condition: identifying which realm one is currently occupying, which poison is running, and which link in the twelve could be interrupted.

Where to intervene #

The practical question the wheel raises is where the cycle can be broken, and the tradition’s answer is specific.

Not at ignorance directly — it is the root but not the accessible point. Not at birth or death, which are results.

The classical answer is between feeling and craving, links seven and eight. Feeling arises unavoidably: contact produces a pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral tone, and no practice prevents it. Craving is the reaction to that tone, and it is habitual rather than necessary. A practitioner who can register “unpleasant” without the reflex of aversion has interrupted the chain at the one place where interruption is straightforward.

This is exactly what mindfulness of feeling — the second foundation of mindfulness — trains. The arrow in the eye is the picture’s way of saying that feeling is not subtle and not optional; what follows it is.

Common questions #

Is the wheel of life the same as the wheel of Dharma? No, and the two are frequently confused. The dharmachakra is the eight-spoked wheel set turning at the first sermon, and it is a positive symbol of the teaching. The bhavachakra is the wheel of cyclic existence, and it is what the teaching is for escaping.

Why six realms when Theravada has thirty-one planes? The six-realm scheme compresses the twenty-six god planes of the Theravada system into one segment. Both describe the same cosmology at different resolutions. Some versions of the wheel show five realms, folding the asuras in with the gods.

Are the animals in the hub always a pig, snake, and cock? Very nearly. The pig for ignorance is universal; the snake is aversion; the bird is usually a cock or rooster for attachment, occasionally a pigeon.

Can I buy one? Thangka paintings and prints of the bhavachakra are widely available, and it is a common image in Buddhist centres. If you acquire one, it is worth checking that the twelve rim images and the six buddhas are present, since simplified versions often omit them and lose most of the doctrinal content.

Sources & further reading #

Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of My Perfect Teacher, trans. Padmakara Translation Group (Shambhala, 2nd ed. 1998) — the realms and the links as used in practice. Robert Beer, The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs (Serindia, 1999) — the iconography in detail. Rupert Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism (Oxford, 1998), chs. 5–6. Stephen Batchelor, The Faith to Doubt (Parallax, 1990) — a contemporary reading of the wheel as a description of present experience. John Daido Loori, The Eight Gates of Zen (Shambhala, 2002) — for a comparative East Asian treatment of the same material.