The Wheel of Life is one of the central concepts in the Buddhist philosophy. It is a visual representation of the insights the first-ever Buddha had about the universe. Now, more than 2500 years later, his philosophy still inspires countless people all over the world. This article will explain what the Wheel of Life is about. It will explain terms like dharma, karma, Samsara, enlightenment, and Nirvana. After all, these five terms come together in this key concept. This article is about the Buddhist Wheel of life and the role of karma.

When I traveled around Nepal, back in 2019, I was first introduced to the Wheel of Life by a local painting teacher in Bhaktapur. He sat down with me and told me about the Buddhist perspective on reincarnation. Soon after, I spent ten days at the Kopan Monastery, where I was taught more about Buddhism. The Buddhist teachers taught me more about reincarnation and what it had to do with karma. Apparently, karma determines what kind of being you turn into in your next life. How does this work? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First of all, what is the Wheel of Life?

What is the Wheel of Life?

The Wheel of Life is a wheel existing out of four circles: one containing the three poisons, one showing the rising and falling, one showing six types of realms, and the outer circle known as the dependent origination.

Something that looks like an angry devil is holding this wheel. The name of this character is Yama. Yama is not actually an evil character. Rather, he is a visual representation of death and impermanence. The relation between Yama and the wheel in that way visualizes that as long as we are stuck in this wheel, we won’t be able to go beyond death and impermanence and move into enlightenment.

Also, nothing is permanent in the wheel, no realm, no state, no situation, no feeling. More about that later. Let’s first go through the wheel.

The three poisons: the driving force of the Wheel of Life

The wheel starts in the center with the inner circle. In the middle, you will find three animals: a pig, a snake, and a rooster. These poisons symbolize ignorance, hatred, and greed, respectively. The pig stands for ignorance, the snake for hatred, and the rooster for greed. 

Buddhists believe that these mindsets as the driving force behind the wheel we are stuck in. The reason the wheel goes round and round is because we have difficulty to see the world as it is. 

The main challenge in the Wheel of Life is ignorance, represented by the pig. The pig chases the rooster, the rooster chases the snake and the snake chases the pig. This means ignorance chases greed, greed chases hatred and hatred chases ignorance. When we are ignorant, we cannot perceive the world as it is. Therefore, we are carried away by how we feel at a certain moment. Because of our ignorance, we head towards greed because it is only a matter of time until we experience a pleasure we want to cling to. When we find out from experience that we are no longer able to feel the pleasure we previously felt (because everything always changes), we start to feel hatred. We feel angry, frustrated, and powerless. From that point, we are heading towards ignorance again, because we reject reality as it is. 

The rising and falling: The results of karmic actions

We know now that our challenges are related to three mindsets. The second circle explains the results of karmic actions. 

The right half of the second circle is dark and shows how we would degrade ourselves to a lower realm as long as we act on our negative mindset. However, if we make good decisions, we will upgrade to a higher realm which, as shown in the left white half of the Wheel of Life, might eventually lead us to enlightenment.

The six realms: How karmic actions lead to the challenges in our next lives

In the third circle of the wheel, you find the six realms in which, according to the Buddhist philosophy, we are all facing different challenges based on our progress.

1. The Hell realm

In the Hell realm, you find beings who are possessed with negative feelings such as hatred and coldness. They are angry beings who usually attack people and situations and sometimes even attack themselves.

2. The Hungry ghost realm

The Hungry Ghost realm accommodates the beings who are always unsatisfied. These creatures are known for having thin necks and huge empty stomachs. Whatever they try to eat, they are not able to swallow. For this reason, they always feel hungry and frustrated and are never satisfied. Hungry ghosts are vulnerable to addictions because they try to take whatever they can get their hands on in order to fill the void they are feeling. However, filling the void seems to be impossible.

3. The Demi-God realm

The Demi-god realm and the God realm have a special connection. The Demi-Gods have a very good life but are always jealous of each other and of the Gods and therefore spend their main energy on greed, envy, and competitiveness. They always want to be superior and have huge egos. 

Because they always want more, you could say that the challenges in this realm might seem similar to the challenges in the hungry ghost realm. The difference is between the fact that the hungry ghosts seem to be disadvantaged by their circumstances while the demi-gods are privileged.

4. The God realm

According to Buddhism, as a reward for good karma, beings go to the God realm. The God realm is full of delightful pleasures. Beings in the God realm are enjoying themselves and are very fortunate. But because they are used to their fortunate life, they are unable to relate to unhappy beings and to have compassion because they don’t know what that feels like. Instead, they experience feelings such as pride, superiority, and alienation.

5. The Human realm

The human realm is all about desire. This realm could be seen as the greatest realm to be in. That is because, in the Human realm, we experience relativeness. We have all five senses and an intelligent mind to experience this world. Perhaps this is why we have the desire to experience as much as possible. Interesting, cause this aligns with the philosophy of Aristotle, who also says that humans want to make use of all of their senses in order to fulfill their purpose. 

In this realm, you can experience both pleasure and pain, both physically and mentally. Interesting about our realm, is that we sometimes also face challenges that are similar to the challenges in the other realms.

6. The Animal realm

In the Animal realm live inhabitants that are challenged by their ignorance. These inhabitants are afraid to step out of their comfort zone and are generally sticking to familiarity. However, when they are forced out of their comfort zone, they often make choices that destroy themselves and others, and the difficult thing about it is that the animals can’t help it. This is because they are led by their instinct, making them unable to make deliberate decisions. They are aware and ready to go into the fight or flight mode and this makes living in the Animal realm extremely stressful.

The dependent origination: How karma determines our next life

The outer and last circle of this wheel, called the dependent origination, brings together the poisons in the center, the results of karmic imprints, and the six realms we just discussed. Because we act out of the mindsets of ignorance, greed, and hatred, we find ourselves in the realms that each have their own challenges. The fact that we are alive and are subjected to aging and death, shows that we have not been able to liberate ourselves from ignorance, greed, and hatred yet. The dependent origination explains how we roll from one life into another within the Wheel of Life. 

This is a matter of causes and effects. Because we take the wrong actions, Buddhists believe we experience negative results and this leads to rebirth until we understand better how to perceive life as it is and take better actions.  

Past life

To elaborate, let’s start at the point of the blind man. This man stands for ignorance and thus for not perceiving and understanding the world as it truly is. Because of our ignorance, we took karmic bodily, mental, and vocal actions in our previous lives. In the Buddhist philosophy, not only our deeds but also our mental and vocal expressions can leave a karmic positive or negative imprint. 

This could be for example wishing something bad to happen to another person (act of hatred), starting a fight before trying to understand the other side of the story (act of ignorance), feeling frustrated about not getting a raise even though you already did very well for yourself (act of greed). 

The first two steps refer to our past lives. It is about how we created negative karma in our former lives because we were not able to see life as it is. The third step is the result of our karma, namely the beginning of our current life. 

Current life

Our current life starts with our consciousness/ awareness. How our mind works is based on our former experiences. Our existence and awareness give us the possibility to take mental, bodily, and vocal actions via our bodies. 

Because we have a body, we are able to take in information through our senses. Interesting here is that in Buddhism also the mind is considered a sense, meaning that in Buddhism they believe people have 6 senses. 

Through our senses, we are able to make contact with the world around us. Once we make contact with the world, we feel things. These feelings are either positive, negative, or neutral. When we feel things, we find out that pleasure or pain often go together with desire. As mentioned before, when we discussed the realms, the human realm is known for desire because we can have sensory experiences. Our challenge is therefore mainly how to deal with desire. 

Many of us are not able to cope with desire in a self-controlling way, which leaves us feeling attached. When we feel attached, we cling to the need to either feel something again or not feel it again. When something caused pleasure before, we desire to experience this feeling again. When something caused us pain, we desire to not ever feel this again. 

When we are attached and are not in control of our minds, we give in to our desires and this changes the actions we take via our body, mind, and speech. In that sense, we change or become different to some extent. In this stage, we create a karmic imprint. This gives birth to our new life in the Wheel of Life. 

New life

If our previous actions have been based on ignorance, hatred, or greed, the consequences will probably be creating negative energy and results, while previous actions based on love, compassion, and wisdom, will create positive energy and results. 

The last step is the result of birth. The result of birth is aging, sickness, and death. It’s a natural result and in Buddhism ageing, sickness, and death are not perceived as something negative as it is a logical consequence. Buddhists protect themselves from feelings of attachment towards their bodies and human life by remaining mindful and doing analytical meditation practices

Death is followed by rebirth, as long as we make decisions that lead to negative karmic imprints. This phenomenon of life, death, and rebirth is also known as the Samsara.

In Buddhism, they believe you may not be able to change the past, but you are in control of your future. For this reason, taking mindful actions is most important to give your life a positive spin.  

Buddhists believe that we pass away when the karma for this life has come to an end. Whether we reach enlightenment depends on how we live our next life. But if we are led by ignorance, hatred, and greed again, the cycle continues, and we might end up in another realm instead. Which realm, that is, depends on our karmic imprints.

How to exit the Wheel and enter enlightenment?

When you exit the Wheel and enter enlightenment, you reach Nirvana. It is the place where you would no longer suffer. The only realm where you could find the Buddhist Wheel of Life’s exit into Nirvana is in the Human realm. This is because as humans we have the capacity to differentiate between good and bad and change the way we think and act. 

But how would you exit The Wheel? As long as our own ignorance, hatred, and greed lead us in our decision-making, we won’t improve. Therefore, in order to exit The Wheel, what we would need to do is changing our bodily, mental, and verbal actions. When we become more aware and create that space that helps us to make better decisions for ourselves and the people around us, we change our karmic imprints. This could be taking time to understand other peoples point of view, perform selfless acts, but also change our mental actions. What also changes our karmic imprints is making amends with the people we hurt in the past. You can read more about this in the interview I had with David Marks, a former Buddhist monk. 

The way to exit The Wheel of Life is by changing our karmic imprints. The way we change our karmic imprints, is by simply focusing on being compassionate to all beings, be wise in our decision making and be kind to one another. 

Gautama Siddhartha Buddha

The Dharma, Buddha’s teachings, is focused on how to see the world from a perspective of truth, as they say. The first Buddha we know is Siddhartha Gautama. Siddhartha was a prince who, at the end of his twenties, escaped his palace and witnessed the other side of the spectrum: pain, aging, and death. He meditated until he was able to make sense of the world he was perceiving. Once everything made sense, he reached the highest level possible in love, compassion, and wisdom. 

Through the Wheel of Life, Gautama Siddhartha Buddha, aimed to explain the concept of causes and results in the actions we take. When we are not mindful and don’t make use of our intelligence, it is very likely we become a victim of our senses. Through mindfulness, meditation, and focus we can make the right decisions for ourselves and replace negative consequences with positive results. 

Enlightenment

Buddhism promotes meditation so we can become more aware of what is happening in our minds. When we meditate, we create mental space and seek to find answers within. This helps us to see things as they truly are. Also, we could realize first-hand that in our world, permanence doesn’t exist, because everything is subject to change. We can show more compassion for everyone around us and gain more wisdom.

The word Buddha stands for ‘The awakened’ or ‘The enlightened’. Siddhartha became a Buddha. However, according to Buddhism, we do not need to be special or chosen in order to become a Buddha. As a matter of fact, we can all become a Buddha at some point in our many lifetimes. 

That is what makes this philosophy so beautiful.

Sources

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