The Three Poisons
The circle just inside the five sectors of
beings indicates that these levels of suffering are produced by karma--by
actions. It is in two halves. The half on the right, which has a white base with
people looking and moving upward, symbolizes virtuous actions, these being of
two types, meritorious and unfluctuating; such actions are the means of
attaining lives as humans, demi-gods, and gods. The left half, which has a dark
base with people facing downward, symbolizes non-virtuous actions, which impel
lifetimes in the lower realms.
From what do these karmas that are sources
of suffering arise? They stem from a further source of suffering--the afflictive
emotions of desire, hatred and ignorance--indicated by the innermost circle
where a pig, a snake, and a rooster are drawn. The pig symbolizes ignorance; the
snake, hatred; and the rooster, desire. In some versions of the painting, the
tails of the rooster and the snake are grasped by the mouth of the pig, thereby
indicating that desire and hatred have ignorance as their root. Also, the tail
of the pig is grasped in their mouths to indicate that each of them acts to
assist and further the other.
The symbolism of these three circles,
moving from the center outwards, is that the three afflictive emotions of
desire, hatred, and ignorance give rise to virtuous and non-virtuous actions,
which, in turn, give rise to the various levels of suffering in cyclic
existence. The outer rim symbolizing the twelve links of dependent-arising
indicates how the sources of suffering-- actions and afflictive
emotions--produce lives within cyclic existence. The fierce being holding the
wheel symbolizes impermanence. If I may make a joke, it does not symbolize a
creator-deity!
The essential point is to symbolize impermanence; this is
why the being is a wrathful monster, though there is no need for it to be drawn
with ornaments and so forth as it is here. Once I had such a painting drawn with
a skeleton rather than a monster, in order more clearly to symbolize
impermanence.
The moon on the far right side indicates liberation. The
Buddha on the left is pointing to the moon, indicating that the liberation that
causes one to cross the ocean of suffering of cyclic existence should be
actualized.
With regard to the history of this painting, at the time of
Shakyamuni Buddha, an outlying king, Udayana, made a present of a jewelled 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 Buddha what he
should give. Buddha indicated that he should have a wheel of cyclic existence
with five sectors drawn and have the following stanzas put with
it:
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.
Buddha told Bimbisara to send this to King Udayana.
It is said that when the king received the picture and studied it, he attained
realizations.
The twelve links of dependent- arising are symbolized by
the twelve pictures around the outside. The first, at the top--an old person,
blind and hobbling with a cane--symbolizes ignorance, the first link. In this
context, ignorance is obscuration with respect to the actual mode of being of
phenomena. Since within, the Buddhist philosophical schools there are four main
systems of tenets and, within those schools, there are many different divisions,
there are many interpretations of what ignorance is. Not only do we not have
time to discuss all of these, I do not even remember all of them!
In
general, with respect to ignorance, there is a factor that is a mere non-
knowing of how things actually exist, a factor of mere obscuration. Also, in
Sutra, nineteen different types of ignorance are described--various types of
wrong views related with extreme positions. However, here in the twelve links of
dependent arising, ignorance is explained to be a wrong consciousness that
conceives the opposite of how things actually do exist.
Ignorance is the
chief of the afflictive emotions that we are seeking to abandon, each of which
is of two types, innate and intellectually acquired. Intellectually acquired
afflictive emotions are based on inadequate systems of tenets, such that the
mind imputes or fosters new afflictive emotions through conceptuality. These are
not afflictive emotions that all sentient beings have and cannot be the ones
that are at the root of the ruination of beings--the latter are innate.
As Nagarjuna says in his Seventy Stanzas on
Emptiness:
That consciousness conceiving things--which are
produced
In dependence upon causes and conditions--to ultimately exist
Was
said by the Teacher to be ignorance.
From it the twelve links
arise.
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