Meaning of Life, The Wheel of Exsistance & Staying within that Circle

 

 Did I experience something that no one could explain or is there some way I can out in words what started this mission of finding my mind body and soul. Exercising my demons within and thinking the way I do today, considering I have book to write. Hopefully,  I get to that sooner rather than later. Maybe I can start writing down memories to even make this blog more understanding to readers of why I am so flustered full of anxiety and doubly full of everyone who thinks I am somehow not a warrior for what I am still accepting and accommodating.

 

Take a minute and truly analyze the painting below

I must say, this blog is directly across from what I usually write or rent about, even the writing style isn't so much related to ourselves and our the way we think, knowledge in a general sense. I still haven't gotten to a topic that drives me insane, no pun intended. The Wheel Of Existence in the Rubin Museum of Art was the first time I felt so confused and connection was almost love but different, not the feeling I ever felt. 

 

Especially, from a painting. The museum is made from an Old Barney's location. It has closed down and there were the Rubin's whom traveled all around collecting old Hindustan art and Buddhist sculptures, art, scripture and Himalayan magical pieces of work that leave your almost tantalizing to the eye, interesting to the eye, for it has many features of where your soul can or will travel. But keep in mind, there is always a thin line between each realm, for it is very different with their God's and Goddesses. The folks and tales are related to real life, with the argue of finding your soul, your true inner self and medication as mediation to find your chi, energy you can control. It's a fight with your mind to the fullest extent, yet with religion and spiritually connects you to things and places to go within yourself. It's a very deep different element of study.

Describing the painting, I can say I believe not was painted circa BC and done on expensive cloth of skin the representative of the painting is the way our soul travels to different realms, an after life. Imagine a wheel, behind the wheel appears to be a Galaxy with God's already surrounding the wheel that a large purple creature. This circle reminds me of Disney World movies. Religion really does reflect in childhood movies and cartoons. In a way they add small little jokes only some would understand and underlying sentences to make you think it was something so simple, yet complex due to the many ways the simplest things can go.

Here is a picture I actually took myself in the museum that day. Truly amazing and spiritually soothing. It still hangs in the museum today. 

Rubin Museum of Art

"With regard to the history of this painting, at the time of Shakyamuni Buddha, a[n] king [of outlying] Udayana made a present of a jeweled robe to the king of Magadha, Bimbisara, who did not have anything of equivalent worth to give in return. Bimbisara was worried about this and asked the Buddha what he should give. The Buddha indicated that he should have a wheel of cyclic existence with five sectors drawn accompanied by the following:

Undertaking this and leaving that,
Enter into the teaching of the Buddha.
Like an elephant in a thatch house,
Destroy the forces of the Lord of Death.

Those who with thorough conscientiousness
Practice this disciplinary doctrine
Will forsake the wheel of birth,
Bringing suffering to an end.

In The Meaning of Life, a collection of discourses by HH the 14th Dalai Lama, the wheel is described as having five segments (the realms of devata and ashuras are combined.)  It is driven by its hub of Three Poisons: desire or attachment, aversion or hatred, and delusion or ignorance, and by the energy resulting from our actions that are invariably motivated by those three.  In other words, by karma. 
The segments between spokes are the different realms into which sentient beings take rebirth.  They are
1a. Devas or gods.
1b. Ashuras or titans (anti-gods, jealous gods, demigods, aka "demons")
2. Manushyas or humans.
3. Tiryakas or animals.
4. Pretas or hungry ghosts.
5. Narakas or demons (hell beings) 

H. E. Thrangu Rinpoche (a Kagyupa,) describes the realms as relating to six distinct conditions.  In the two higher realms, they are Pride and Jealousy (1a and 1b above, respectively.)  In the "Realm in which it is easiest to attain Enlightenment" (2 above) humans are afflicted with five disturbing emotions.  The lower realms (3, 4 & 5 in the list above) are respectively associated with Ignorance, Desire and Anger. 

At the top is are the heavens or realm of gods that is usually blended with that of the demi-  or anti-gods, a.k.a. titans or ashuras, with whom they constantly struggle for dominance. 

Before it [at 10 o'clock], is the human realm.  Read in Jamgon Kongtrul the Great's Generation and Completion with commentary by Thrangu Rinpoche [scroll down the linked page] of ". . . the complete correspondence to all the events of one life cycle. Starting with the bardo and the entrance of the bardo consciousness into the womb, going through your whole life and ending with your death, and again your entrance into the bardo" including the stages of the process for a fetus in the womb of its mother.  

After the top realm, going in a clockwise order, next is the realm of those who, after death, are still so attached by desire to this world that they are ghosts.  In the Tibetan version, they are shown with very narrow necks and are known as ‘hungry ghosts’ because their condition prevents them from enjoying food or drink.

At the bottom is the hell realm that is often shown to comprise both hot and cold forms of torment.  The Sutra of Remembrance of the True Law describes 8 different hells but makes it clear that they are the product of our own mind. 

Next is the animal realm where sentient beings from whales to insects are confined in fear and ignorance. 

Nearing the top once more, is the realm of human beings in our varying conditions, degrees and statuses.  

The in-between states are called in Tibetan, the bardo.  This is also the word for the locale of consciousness while it is not embodied, as in certain kinds of dreaming.
As dismal as the situation may appear at first glance, in each of the realms is depicted a symbol of the dharma providing the opportunity for liberation from the repetitious situation known as samsara. 
Buddhists believe that it is the human experience of existence that provides the best opportunity for enlightenment, liberation [Skt. moksha], nirvana.   "Just as it is impossible to describe colours to a person blind from birth, or the joys of flight to a fish in the depths of the ocean,  . . .  the experience of nirvana is indescribable."

There are various versions of the Wheel of Rebirth.  In a few, there is a buddha figure in each segment; in others there are various symbols used to represent the dharma.  The pictures illustrating the "12 links" on the rim of the wheel may be somewhat different, too

 

"If any link in the twelve-linked circle of causation (pratitya-samutpada) is broken the entire circle ceases to be operative because the root of it, the zero [Sanskrit shunya] is discovered.  This origination is rooted in zero, proceeds from it, ends in it, and itself is nothing but an extension of zero." 

 This zero is not infinite [like conceptions of God] but neither is it finite.

Whether we are meditating, dreaming, or going about our other activities ultimately we are responsible for our own experience. According to the Buddhist view, objects and beings make their appearance without an external stimulus, or any First Cause.  It is said that, just as a painter can paint a portrait of a demon and then be terrified by it, so unenlightened beings paint a picture of the six realms of samsara and then are tormented and terrified by that picture.

Through the power of our own minds, we create the six realms of existence and then rotate through them. We are the ones who create the realms and the endless cycle known as samsara.

Samsara

The Wheel is a depiction of existence with all its conditions and circumstances that is generally called samsara (or sangsara) -- the unsatisfactory cycle of death and rebirth that can continue endlessly unless we work to change that situation.  

• See the First Turning of the Dharma Wheel:  4 Noble Truths.

Jamgon Lodro Thaye Rinpoche's best known work is The Torch of Certainty.  In the section called "the Four Ordinary Foundations," the fourth topic is the  'Shortcoming of Samsara.'  Here, this great 19th-century "ecumenical" dharma teacher points out:

Three Types of Misery Common to All Samsaric Beings

"In brief, the miseries experienced by beings in the lower realms and the pain of disease, malicious gossips, etc., experienced by gods and men constitute the misery of misery itself.  When you lead a wealthy, peaceful existence, life seems very pleasant.  But soon, because of impermanence, the misery of change arrives.  The two kinds of misery mentioned above are grounded in the fact that the five skandhas have come together.  This is the misery latent in all conditioned existence.

"Finding their foothold in the five skandhas, the many kinds of misery of the three realms arise.  Thus, no matter how high or low your state of birth, you cannot avoid samsara's very nature: the three types of misery! Even if your life seems happy and you possess a healthy body, a house, money, friends and servants -- these are merely misery in disguise. They are like food offered to a nauseated man or a hangman's feast for a condemned prisoner."

There are no laws of karma.  

That is, there is no set of commandments or statutes, no rule book, no universal set of does and don't to govern the behavior of beings.

We could perhaps say that there is a law of karma.  Here we are using the word, law, in the same sense as when we speak of the law of gravity.   

Under normal conditions and in the physical universe as we experience it, when a fruit disconnects from a tree (and if nothing interrupts it) it travels towards the ground. 

This is just what happens.

Buddhists do not generally believe in a cosmic judge who assigns consequences; result follows naturally from the action.   However, since we will inevitably regret karma that is the product of harmful or negative actions, we do hear some Buddhists using expressions such as, "Incurring a karmic debt" or "Having to repay karmic debts" as if we were talking about book-keeping practices. 

In that case, karmic is being used as a kind of shorthand to refer to the condition or status of consequences as if it were possible to halt the flow of karma and examine the state of on-going process.

The 12 Links of Causality

On the outer edge or rim of the wheel are twelve images.  They symbolically refer to the factors that interact to determine the consequences of activity or karma.  They derive from and can be related to, the Madhyamika view concerning the nature of reality.  Here, too, there may be some variation depending upon the tradition or school to which the tangka artist belongs.

1. At top is a blind man with his stick representing spiritual blindness; this is the state of ignorance in which we can easily lose our way.  Sometimes we do not even know there is a way.   
2. At 2 o'clock is a potter at work on his own products.  These are the deeds and actions we perform  ~ the formations, preparations or samskaras.  We are responsible for our own pots, not fate.
3. At the 3 o'clock position is a monkey playing in a tree.  It depicts ordinary attention or consciousness which shifts continuously in the undisciplined mind.  Meditation seeks to calm the monkey in order to gain access to the nature of consciousness.
4. At 4 is a boat with two people in it, Name and Form.  [Some versions have a person and the heaps or skandhas] These act together as the conditioned way in which we experience the world.  The boat is the mind moving about on 'reality'.  (Some have interpreted this image as the physical and the intellectual or spiritual moving the boat of experience.) 
5. At 5 is a house with six openings:  five shuttered windows and a closed door.  These are the five senses plus a sixth which is the faculty of apperception  by which we interpret the input of the senses.  That is, the sixth sense is apperception, recognition at the sub-conscious level.
6. Moving to the 6 o'clock position: A man and a woman embracing demonstrates contact, the consequence of sensual perceptions.
7. At 7 is a person who has been struck in the eye by an arrow.  He is wounded by emotion, the subsequent feelings that can have a "fatal" effect.  They create suffering.
8. At 8 is a woman offering a drink to a man.  It illustrates desire that has been stimulated by perceptions and emotions which leads us to drink more from the world of appearances.
9. At the 9th position is a person picking the fruit of his tree.  He receives the consequence he expects will be sweet.
10. At 10 is a maiden about to cross the stream. In one version of the Wheel, there is one person beckoning another to go or to come back.
11. At 11 is a woman giving birth. The new life is determined by the fruits of the old and is attracted to the parents accordingly, in order to be born.
12. Finally [?], the illustration that ends one round but begins another new life in one of the realms, is that of two people carrying a burden on a litter.  This is the body, a corpse wrapped up on its way to be disposed of.  Other people suffer as they bear the burden of another's death.

The Wheel of Life is a traditional representation of the samsaric cycle of existence.
Jeffrey Hopkins writes:

The diagram, said to be designed by Buddha himself, depicts an inner psychological cosmology that has had great influence throughout Asia. It is much like a map of the world or the periodic table of elements, but it is a map of an internal process and its external effects.^[1]

Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche writes:

It’s quite a popular painting that you can see in front of almost every Buddhist monastery. In fact, some Buddhist scholars believe that the painting existed prior to Buddha’s statues. This is probably the first ever Buddhist symbol that existed...

One of the reasons why the Wheel of Life was painted outside the monasteries and on the walls (and was really encouraged even by the Buddha himself) is to teach this very profound Buddhist philosophy of life and perception to more simple-minded farmers or cowherds. So these images on the Wheel of Life are just to communicate to the general audience.

All my life I grew up around loving parents and worked hard, we stayed fairly happy through out the years. I have always believed in Karma and what goes around comes around, just as what goes up must come down. Looking back now, I for sure know I was a very lucky child, having both my parents happily married and as an only child, getting mostly everything I wanted. I wouldn't say I was spoiled but I did for sure  work hard in school and made sure to get As  for those special presents. I graduated  school and continued efforts in education with community college. If you read my other blogs you can tell I came to a stand still in life yet it has never been more eye opening. Sometimes very confused about what I have heard or seen in the past year, I am still interested in putting together a book of essays describing the moments I have been dreaming of and unreal memories racing through my brain. After I came back to the country it is almost as I began to think differently about life. At first, I was struggling to understand and appeared scared to others. Yes, I was scared but who wouldn't be at some things I have seen that where so new, therefore scary. I don't know how to even put it out there without stating it was fictional day dream but I can say things wet very dark. I became a different person yet my brain was yearning to stay myself. It was like improvisation with yourself or others you are connected with more than I'll ever know.

Khenpo Karthar, abbot of Karma Triyana Dharmachakra, says in response to the question about whether we have any choice in our birth family:

                                        " ... .  In fact, we did not have a choice at all.
It was brought about by our karma. Choosing implies that we pick the
human form and we have the capacity to choose which family (the
father and mother with whom we want to take birth).  We do not have
that choice.  Based on the strength of positive and negative karma, this
had to happen, so there is no choice involved. We could say that
ignorance is implied there because we had no choice. Because of not
having a choice about our parents or where we will take birth, it could
be said that ignorance is involved. To give an example of the force of
karma, it is very similar to going up in an airplane and throwing
thousands of pieces of paper out of it. How far they would go and
where they land depends on how the wind blows them. Likewise,
where we are born, what family we are born in and what sort of form
we have, are based on the power of the karma, not on our choice.

For some spiritually advanced beings, it is quite different. They have
[many] fewer defilements. They do have a choice as to where they will
take birth, even in what form and in what family."

Would it be crazy to say that I in a way crossed paths with Lucifer or that somehow has over played their game on me ? After, he came back from Israel towards Christmas time, once again he needed somewhere new to live. There was always young man hanging out in the laundry room working on essays and other things on his laptop. He had bumped into him, his name Evan, not anything but E-van. Appearing to me the same person, yet this time around he was  a chef whom was struggling yet loved his spices. Something in  the  back  on my mind remembers the kid from the neighborhood a bit different and could have sworn his name was Ivan. 

He let DD come and stay with him for a few weeks until he himself was moving out. During this time, I not only just got back to the country yet, I still was soaking in everything that happened and how much I needed to reflect to make this point of day understandable to even myself. 

Was I dreaming, what happened from the one year before I left, while I was gone and now one year later which feels like 4 years mushed in one year easily. Maybe I saw things wrong and maybe I just needed rest. They all sounds like lame excuses not to talk about what could have truly been a moment that is needed to be spoken about out loud.

Something tells me later in life I will write a book explaining the depth of life in a physiological way with a spin of life lessons including your past life your present life and your future life with the the plot mostly in the future. Would be good to the extra, the extreme or live in our own fantasy, with wicked fences as but brother watches from above, don't forget that circle that you need to maintain to get to the correct life after death . Of course, a lot of my life and things i dream about will be interesting. Sometimes I can't even begin to explain all of the changes that happened within such. Shirt period of time and if I am indeed correct for all that I said I should and am standing for, was worth it. Remembering and having the memories to rely on everyday will forever drive me. They say Cadillacs doesn't get older, just faster. I woke up one day and everything around seemed as if it fell into place yet I began to drift away from reality. Which still boggling to me, why did I drift away maybe the ones around me, when in fact, the ones with their super egos concertrated on the wrong ideas. Ofcourse, if I wasn't in a the right state if mind for social reasons, I am quite sure that many around me we're on the same boat as me.

I wonder if this happened to my mother. She told me that there was escaping having a child that no matter how much you yell or screaming I want to go HOME! Keep her inside ! Yet, I was born and she yelled with the most joy she ever could to be out in her chest. It still said when my face was cleaned off I was the only child not crying, yet observing my surroundings. I can't believe she said to my father whether or not it's happening, with or without you. But how could he say no to the most unbelievably beautiful person sitting in front of him to such a miracle. I believe in past life and I think how I was raised was very different type of being spoiled. In my family, it isn't about material things, yet with knowledge. I have been curious about taking a few steps in life, my mother taught me so much how to truly be who I am.

Kindness for weakness was never an option. Always stay on your toes and trust, stupidity gets you further than you would ever think. Sometimes acting sloppy is needed to spread  something, a little  messenger  with the  simplest  action, like adding 2 coca cola  drinks  when you  only ordered  one yes, it can be accidentally done, in between the lines of life just like a book, it can mean. Million impossible things that now seem a few miles away. Life has ups and downs but I think it has reason. If I tell you what has occurred in my neighborhood, maybe it has happened within yours as well. I live close by a train and I swear on everything the train is literally saying things Everytime it comes by with the electrical panel and wheels. Yes, some reading this are thinking weird but so are the wheels on the tar and air conditioning, sometimes even the noise in the background of my television sounds like a message. Bringing me to the fact, I once woe up and I felt like I was almost completely different. I remember like yesterday how much future I just remembered like, within one night of sleep I saw everything in many life times. There's so much more, maybe aliens came.

To Be Continued.