![]() For Western man there is no coming back, the eternal now having been sacrificed to past, present, and future the myth of the great return is lost. There may be something more eternal to go to heaven or hell but heaven and hell are dead end streets. Thus, the separate “me” begins at birth and ends at death. The Western mind has a linear, as opposed to cyclical, view of time. Buddhism teaches that this sense of self is an illusion. An analytical approach to the world encourages man to see his essential separateness as the basis of his existence. The most primal distinction is the “me” and the “not me” - the one that tells you who you (think you) are. Giving precedence to the phenomenal many over the transcendent one it separates “reality” into categories, names, defines, and compares them, and then looks for more distinctions and so more categories. Descended from Aristotle the Western mind is basically analytical as opposed to intuitive. At first it is a hard concept for the Western mind to take seriously since it has been conditioned to accept as real only what it is told by the senses, only what can be verified objectively. The idea of reincarnation was stamped out of Christian doctrine long ago in the priestly process of demystification. Nidanas) whereby man continues to be reborn into life after life. Lokas) of Rebirth are illustrated, and the outer circle depicts the Twelve Links in the Chain of Causality (S. The next circle is symbolic of the bardo, described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead as the home of the soul between incarnations. mula-klesa) which prevent us from seeing the world as it really is. In the middle are the three obscuring passions (S. Preserved as a tradition in Tibet, it comes to us as a symbolic system describing Samsara, the unenlightened state of man caught in the web of his own illusion. ![]() as a means of exposing an illiterate people to the Buddhist ideas of reincarnation and the cause of suffering. ![]() Though some say it was drawn first by the Buddha, historians say that it originated in India around the second century A.D. The Tibetan Wheel of Life* is a graphic representation of basic Buddhist philosophy.
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