Wheel
Wheel of Buddhism and Tathagata Buddha
Tathagata sees the turning of the Wheel , where coming is going, and going is coming.
Not only the wanderer, but all living and non-living beings , that he observes around, are tied to it as a part of the One existing in many spheres. The particles and dusts that constitute his physical existence are tied to all other particles and dust, that form the materiality of the universe. They are all connected with each other by forces , that they can never escape. The universe, in which his body is immersed, is bound in a whole from which no part can be separated and taken away. This whole is constantly changing, transforming, taking new shapes like foams of waves always changing, decaying and surging without a halt: One form is penetrating into another; one body is migrating to other body; one matter is changing its materiality by uniting with other matter; one life is transmuting into another. This perpetually changing whole is contained inside one immovable void, where there exist no motion, no time, no change or transmutation of matter or life. This void exists as the bosom of a great compassion, that radiates through all - living or non-living beings.
Though, they are inseparable , and tied by the laws of the material world Tathagata sees in the journey-man the part, that appears separate in time and space, that has come into being by the mediation of the hands of love.
It is the volition, the psychic stream, or the will, that is making the journey-man move in a different domain than the domain in which He is. This stream of the will, that makes the journey-man move, has brought forth the existence of time. This stream is ever changing, ever fluctuating, ever transitory as rays on the currents of a river. Only in contact with the matter in the temporal flow, the volition receives its glitter, and forms its comprehension of itself as a will that permeates all. Though its comprehension of itself remains impermanent and elusive like changing and moving mirrors, that scatter light and create innumerable images without defining any true image of itself.
This volition, or the will, flows through all - from the plants, animals, to the highest state of the illumined Buddha. They are all inseparable parts of the will, that is conditioning the motions of the beings. The particular journey-man is only a manifestation of the will. Like his own, wanderer's acts, deeds, thoughts, are the impermanent foams of the will upsurging in contact with the forces of the world according to the condition in which the body and the mind are enclosed. The thoughts always decay, the will always resurge anew to seek a new form and, scatter new light according to the new condition where the mind arrives as waves on the shore of life.
The nature seems to be bound in this unity of the material and the psychic domains - where everything are impermanent, ephemeral and changing and turning with the Wheel. Inside it Tathagata is living, had lived, and will be living for eternity - though in different forms, carrying different awareness and enlightenment of Himself seen through the changing mirrors in different times. There exists no one Tathagata, in one time and in a particular place. He is strewn all around in eternity and everywhere, who can never be completely seen or known. Though He appears as someone, He neither is and is not, because in the impermanence of the world all His appearances negate His true appearance.
Now He is , that He is, because He is inside the Wheel from where Gautama has been seeking an escape. The snake, the pig , the cock - those symbols of passion, lust, greed in the centre of the Wheel- the shadowy figures of the mind, are all existing in Him like inside everyone else . In the Wheel they are rotating with the lion, that is trying to tear off the darkness and free the sense-bound mind to the light. Like the blind man, the boat, the open windows , the man with arrow stuck in the eyes, the woman offering drink , the man gathering fruit from a tree, the pregnant woman, the woman giving child birth and the man carrying a dead on his shoulder, moving on the outermost fourth circle of the Buddhist Wheel of Life, illusion, passion, temptation, suffering pertaining to the sense-bound world exist in the Wheel, that churns in the consciousness of Tathagata. He is trying to see through the darkness to His past lives: Like the ferryman in the boat he is trying to steer his mind in the river where his mind is afloat as a boat of illusion, like the journey-man he also carries thirst and passion; like the man plucking the fruits he is also hungry of knowledge and prone to temptation. At the end of the cycle death awaits before he will be reborn again as another mortal on Earth.
Like in the Third circle of the Buddhist Wheel, that encircles the fourth , different worlds rotate inside each other. These worlds are inside Him as well as outside in the nature. Beside the infernal world, where the ghosts stalk, there exists the realm of the animals and the plants, that have not yet awaken to the conscious state. He is also a part of that unawake world where Buddha radiates. His compassion and bliss, pours forth to the ghosts, and the demons. Here Heaven is one with Hell, the earth is one with the sky, the fire is one with the water, the darkness is one with the light, and the passion is one with the mortification and submission to the will, an immersion in the light of love.
The burning Wheel
In the world immersed in the glow of compassion , where real, myth and dream are inseparable, Tathagata watches the light flowing out of the circle or the sphere, or a super- sphere, or the halo, that no description can adequately explain. The light exists outside the boundary of time and space and has encompassed Him and the world around . Like Ixion's fiery wheel, fire is leaping out in all directions from its rim, where all matter, all plants, all animals, all men and women , all things possessing forms are sacrificed in the funeral pyre. Inside this rim, where the world is burning, all beings - living and non-living - are floating and dancing in a sea of death and life. Like Shiva, who is half- male and half- female, it is the dance of the deity who is on one side the sun, wearing lion's pelt and radiating fire, that turns all to ashes, and on the other side the bull - the moon - the ascetic with a third eye in the forehead and a body covered with ashes. He visits deaths and destruction of the underworld as well as lifts the world from the ashes.
When Kama had fired the arrow of love to break Shiva’s contemplation, without whose love the existence of the world can not be sustained, the flower shaft, that had struck Him, had transformed as a garland around His neck. When His love was aroused , a lightning flash had come from the third eye to destroy the body of Kama, who had caused Him to wake from His meditation. After kama's body had turned into cinders, Shiva had revived Kama as the bodiless son of illusory Maya.
The destroyer is inseparable with Sakti, or the energy , that creates the world from ashes. He dances over the serpentine world and releases the power that can create and renew the world. While He sits in a deep trance in the centre of the burning wheel and remains immobile, the fiery world dances inside a lotus , that is the symbol of the illusory world bound in forms. The deity has four arms. With one arm He arouses the world to consciousness with sounds and speech, by playing a drum, with another hand He licks the world with a tongue of fire; with the third hand He assures the beings of His compassion and love; with the fourth He lifts the beings from the illusion and the ignorance of the world.
Tathagata gazes at the centre where Shiva meditates. Inside the burning ring Odysseus had been tossed from life to death, and death to life again and again; Heracles, Aeanea, Arjuna, Karna, and innumerable heroes had been tossed in the sea of burning pyre. In different shores females had appeared as enchantress, entertainers, and lovers or goddesses. It is the same Odysseus' or Aeanea's wanderings over the nightmarish sea, where storms and thunders had wrecked their ships, as Gautama's wandering through the forest, where Kama-Mara had appeared with storm, thunder and quaking. It is the same voyage towards and beyond the islands bound by the motions of the sun and the moon.
The universe, inside which Tathagata exists, is a mandala where forms and formless are inseparable . There is no way of demarking the boundary of the fiery ring. It passes through every point in space and at every moment in time. The ring is neither outside, nor inside the form, that is encompassed by the flames. It exists both in the domain of the known as well as the unknown, in the conscious and the unconscious spheres.
Inside this ring the world is half-dark and half-light, beings are half- awake and half- sleeping, creatures are half- splitted as males and half- divided as females, half- powered by the forces of life and half- governed by the forces of death, the women are half- witches and half- goddesses, the men are half- gods and half- titans. Half of the whole existential sphere constitutes the sense-bound realm bound to forms and the other half belongs to the world of spirit.
Tathagata watches each half being united with the other half to form a whole, that in turn is being divided into two, and like this it is going on... ad infinitum. By this process of union and separation the energy is being released. The energy, that is released by the annihilation is flowing out at the rim of the burning wheel , carrying physical energy in the material world and psychic power to the mental sphere. The energy radiating from the mandala has created time and space, in which things are destined to follow laws and a order that no existence can ever evade. There exist mandalas inside mandalas- one enveloping the other- or, one coming out of the other, though outside and inside have no meaning in the sense space. One's inside is other's outside, that penetrates through domains beyond space. From the tiniest state of the being to the dimension extending as large as the cosmos itself , there exists an ingoing journey of the world to the void, and an out flowing journey of forms and energy from the void. Inside the mandala darkness is only an aspect of the light and vice versa, though darkness or light are concepts that have no meaning outside the illusory mind, where objects and subjects are entangled in the reality of time and space. Here spirit and matter have united as two aspects of one whole, that sets the world in motion but, at the same time, remains unmoved at the centre as the Self - as the diamond inside the lotus. The Lotus is the form giving aspect of the existence, that reveals itself in the movements of the thoughts and creates the illusion of the world. The pyres of the world leaps from the petals of this lotus. Yogis make journeys inside it. There they find the mystic void, that exists beyond the domain of the sun and the moon. At the centre the radiant Self rests above the illusory world unattached to thoughts, feelings and forms.
The immobile deity exists as a monad without any extension in space and not pertaining to any temporal flow. Energy, that coils it as a serpent, causes the beings and the forms to rise and emanate in the world. This fusion of Shiva and Sakti is the source of all radiation that flow out and return back to it. By this process the phenomenal world comes into being where the forms toss as vessels on tumultuous waves that break, join and disjoin and rejoining again and again.... releasing psychic power from it..
Tathagata , is set in a journey towards this centre where the duality of the male and female will dissolve.
Return to the realm of Orpheus