Within The Theravada Tradition
T. B. Karunaratne states:
- Though in Theravāda literature there is no mention of an actual pictorial execution of a ”Wheel of Life,” yet the concept of comparing Dependent Origination to a wheel is not unknown. In the Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga), the famous commentator Buddhaghosa Acariya says:
- “It is the beginningless round of rebirths that is called the ’Wheel of the round of rebirths’ (saṃsāracakka). Ignorance (avijjā) is its hub (or nave) because it is its root. Ageing-and-death (jarā-maraṇa) is its rim (or felly) because it terminates it. The remaining ten links (of the Dependent Origination) are its spokes (i.e. karma formations up to process of becoming ).”
Read more about this topic: Bhavacakra
Famous quotes containing the words within the and/or tradition:
“I have seen
not behind but within, within the
dull grief, blown grit, hideous
concrete façades, another grief, a gleam
as of dew, an abode of mercy....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created. The average conservative is a slave to the most incidental and trivial part of his forefathers’ glory—to the archaic formula which happened to express their genius or the eighteenth-century contrivance by which for a time it was served.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)