Samsara

The wheel of life 

Samsara or “the wheel of life” is the Tibetan buddhists view on life.

Samsara is the wheel of life we often get entrapped into because of our mundane mindsets, intentions and actions in regard to others and the planet in large. As our minds create our intentions which creates our actions, which creates our world, one may see the world as a reflection of our minds. So the origin of Samsara, buddhists say is our minds, and therefore a buddhist practice contains mainly of working with the mind.

What drives samsara, the samsaric mind or the wheel of life, are mainly the three destructive emotions or kleshas which you may find at the hub of the depitiction of the wheel of life; Ignorance, Greed/Attachment and Anger/Aversion.  These are the main emotions which creates a lot of trouble for us. That is why tibetan buddhism call them poisonous.

Ignorance consists mainly of us not knowing the real nature of mind but it consists also of our ignorance in regard to everything as a consequence of not knowing the real nature of our mind. The three kleshas or emotions are depicted as animals, and Ignorance is in the wheel of life depicted as a pig.

The pig bites the tale of a rooster. The rooster stands for Attachment/Greed. We grasp and are greedy for things our there which we want; may it be money, fortune, wealth, a new car, a new hobby, a new furniture or a new set of clothes. There is always something to grasp for and to be greedy for in our expectancies that this is what is truly going to make us happy.

The bird bites the tale of the snake. The snake stands for Anger og Aversion. As with greed, we also try to distance ourselves or keep away from what we don’t like or don’t want. Anger or aversion creates immerse negative consequences as it gets spilled out from you, and it covers all the nice impressions one may have accumulated or built up in ourselves, in regard to other people and/or in regard to the rest of the world.

These three emotions determines our lives or our minds one may say. As to how much we are able to stay away from these emotions or kleshas, or tame them in ourselves, our minds and as a consequence our surroundings become lighter or darker/denser.