chapter 1

The Wheel of Birth and Death

Mahayana Buddhism developed a world image variously called the “Wheel of Samsara,” or the “Wheel of Birth and Death.” The Sanskrit word samsara is derived from the roots sam, “together,” and the verb-root sri, “to flow.” Thus it means “flowing together,” and so the mandala as a whole could be called the “Wheel of Flowing Together.” Displayed in countless tankha paintings in Buddhist countries in temples and shrines, it is a symbolic map of the ever-changing connected events of existence. Often one will see the image as one enters a temple, as if it were a kind of mirror being held up to the pilgrim for self-recognition.

Interestingly, the mandala is called the wheel of birth and death, not life and death. In the Western dualistic worldview life and death are seen as opposite, in constant struggle with each other, as in Freud’s theory of Eros versus Thanatos, a drive-to-live versus a drive-to-die. In the Buddhist process-centered conception, the opposite process of dying is birthing. Birthing is a natural process of life, as dying is a natural process of life. Birth and death are transition phases of our repeated journeys through multiple worlds. They are the entrances into and the exits from particular states of being.

According to Buddhism, as well as other philosophies in the perennial tradition of East and West, when we depart or die from this world, we enter into other dimensional realms for continued growing and learning—and eventually reincarnate for another round of earth-life. Every dying is followed—after a time—by a rebirth. Every birth and every rebirth is followed—after a time—by another dying. Thinking about birth and death in this way has a subtle but profound effect on one’s attitude. We may come to a calm acceptance of our many births and many deaths.

Buddhism and other Asian traditions have long taught what we in the West have only recently come to understand again: that we have life before birth and we have life after death. Western psychological research on recovery of prenatal memories, and on the otherworld visions of near-death experiences (NDE), have expanded our empirical knowledge of prenatal and postmortem life and consciousness.

Metaphorically and experientially, each of the major transitions in the human life cycle can be thought of as a dying and birthing. One could say that the fetal self “dies” when the infant self is born. In many archaic and indigenous tribal societies, puberty rites of passage mark the ending-dying of the child-self and the initiation-birthing into adulthood. Such rites can seem severe and brutal, almost like a symbolic “killing” of the child-self. In such a worldview, the harsh puberty initiation means you have to die to the world of childhood in order to be born into the new world of adulthood. Similarly, when a man or woman enters into marriage and begins a life of parenting a child, there is an end to the freewheeling life of a young adult and, concomitantly with the birth of a child, the birth of a new self as parent.

The wheel of samsara has six segments that show six worlds of existence, inhabited by six different classes of beings: the human world, the world of animals, the heaven world, the hell world, the world of raging and violent spirits (asuras), and the world of “hungry ghosts” or craving spirits (pretas). This model is both spatial/topographical and temporal/biographical. It is a spatial map, since we always exist in one of these realms, together with the other beings who inhabit that realm. It is also a temporal model, since we humans are always entering and leaving the different realms, according to our karmic predispositions and the choices we make. The image of the Wheel of Samsara is a teaching tool of inexhaustible depth on the Buddhist doctrine of the interconnectedness of all life.

We may interpret the meaning of the image of the six worlds at four levels of meaning, or four different metaphors. The first level of meaning we might call the metaphysical: humans exist in the human world, animals in the animal world, and the inhabitants of the other four realms are four different kinds of nonhuman metaphysical entities, or what are traditionally called spirits, gods, demons, or ghosts. The second level of interpretation is reincarnational: we human beings may incarnate in these realms in different lifetimes, and dwell in them between lifetimes, according to accumulated karmic propensities. A third level of meaning is to regard the six worlds as a kind of personality typology: different types or classes of human beings exist in the different realms when their life experience corresponds to that of the beings symbolically portrayed in those realms.

At the fourth, or intrapsychic level, the six worlds represent a mapping of different human states of consciousness. We humans all pass through the different realms or states within our lifetime, as a function of karmic predispositions and learned behavior patterns. We may find ourselves in one or more of the different realms in the course of one day: one may be in a hell world of extreme pain, or in the preta realm of addictive craving, or in the asura world of violent rage, for hours or sometimes even just minutes at a time. The human world—our normal, functional state of existence and consciousness—intersects with these other, more specialized and fixated realms or states. That is why the Buddhist texts emphasize that we should always attempt to be as conscious as possible, whichever world we find ourselves in—and that the human world offers the best opportunities of liberation.

The world of ordinary existence or samsara is thought of as an ever-turning wheel, and the Buddha’s enlightenment teachings were also referred to as a wheel. Following his own enlightenment experience, he was said to have set the wheel of dharma into motion—the teachings designed to liberate human beings from the suffering inherent in our existence on the wheel of samsara. But what does this mean? Is it desirable to “get off the wheel,” as some imagine, or is that even possible?

I suggest that the ever-turning wheel of samsaric existence is an image of life on planet Earth. Planet Earth is a multidimensional setting for life-forms evolving within the guiding framework of the laws of nature—those known to us and those not yet known or poorly understood by our sciences. There are numerous other beings inhabiting the many dimensions of planet Earth. Our current scientific worldview recognizes and concerns itself only with those beings inhabiting the densest or material dimension.

Esoteric Buddhism, like other esoteric spiritual and indigenous shamanistic teachings, hold that we share existence on this planet with various classes of beings (generically called “spirits”) inhabiting the other subtler, or non-ordinary dimensions associated with Earth. It behooves us therefore to become acquainted with those realms and those beings we are most likely to encounter during our human existence, both during life and after death. In all the worlds —the subtler, more fluid ones and the denser, heavier ones—your thoughts and actions in relation to others create your reality. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is,” as the Bible says (Proverbs 23:7). Inevitably, we become like those with whom we associate, both in our thoughts and our actions.

So when Buddhist texts speak of the liberation afforded by the Buddha “setting in motion the wheel of truth or dharma,” this does not mean we stop the wheel of life, or stop living on planet Earth. Perhaps we may think of the wheel of dharma as being at right angles to the wheel of unconscious, samsaric existence. It thereby offers suffering beings a way to free themselves progressively from its chains, in order to practice living—and dying—consciously and mindfully.

The Hub of the Wheel of Existence

In the hub of the wheel of samsara image are shown three animals, biting each other’s tails, symbolizing what the Buddhists call the “three poisons,” the toxic root causes or primary driving forces that keep us bound to the turnings of the wheel of unconscious existence. The three animals in the hub are a rooster, symbolizing craving, lust, and greed; a snake, symbolizing aversion, aggression, and hatred; and a pig, symbolizing blind ignorance, delusion, and unconsciousness. The rooster of craving is eating the snake of hatred, which is feeding on the pig of delusion. So, greed, hatred, and delusion are identified as the driving forces that keep us cycling through the various worlds of reality.

If we compare this imagery of the three toxins with the medieval Christian teachings of the seven deadly sins, we can see they cover roughly the same ground. “Craving” in the Buddhist doctrine covers the sins of greed, gluttony, and lust; “hatred” covers pride, envy, and anger; and delusional unconsciousness is equivalent to the sin of “sloth.”

This imagery also parallels approximately the Freudian analysis of the primary motivational dynamics of the human psyche. Sigmund Freud identified sexual desire, which in the Buddhist view is one aspect of craving, and aggression, equivalent to hatred or aversion, as the two primary forces in the unconscious id. These primary drives, according to Freud, are operating in the unconscious psyche, which is delusional and irrational.

Thus what both the Freudians and the Buddhists are saying is that all of our thinking, all of our feelings, all of our experience in all states of consciousness is ultimately driven by these three interrelated motivational factors—lust-craving, aggression-hatred, and deluded unconsciousness—all that is, except the experiences and insights that are connected with the path and practices of liberation. Unlike Buddhism, Freudian psychoanalysis doesn’t accommodate the possibility of liberation from the thrall of the primary unconscious drives. At best, one may “sublimate” them into creative expression and mitigate their unhealthy impact in our lives.

The Six Worlds of Existence and Consciousness

The six worlds are the realms of consciousness in which we live, into which we are born, and out of which we die, depending on our karma and the unfolding of the links of codependent origination. Some people may live all their life in one world—they are the typical inhabitants of that realm, akin to the “spirits” of that realm. Most of us move through the different worlds, the different states, spending months, weeks, days, hours, or even minutes in any given realm. One could say that each world typifies a certain kind of attitude, a certain set of attachments or motivations, certain kinds of thought processes and characteristic behavior patterns.

Each of the pictures of the six worlds on the wheel of life mandala depicts the characters and scenes typical of that world. Each of them is connected to two of the links in the twelvefold chain of codependent origination—indicating the factors that typically precipitate our entry into that realm. Buddhism teaches that you can transcend, you can be liberated from, any of the realms. This is why a Buddha or bodhisattva figure is shown in each world, teaching enlightenment to the spirits and the humans dwelling in that realm, holding a symbolic object or making a symbolic gesture (mudra) to indicate the path of liberation from that realm.

* * *

If we visualize the wheel of samsara as a clockface divided into six two-hour segments, between 9 and 11 is the human world. (It should be noted that in some tanka paintings of the wheel of samsara, the left and right halves of the image can be reversed—which is consistent with the concept that this is a nonlinear, nonsequential model.)

In the iconographic imagery of the human realm, you see some people working; you see a group of travelers walking on a path in the mountains; there is someone suffering illness and someone ministering to the sick person; someone is assaulting and attacking another; in a house a woman is shown with a baby; in another room a group of people are sitting around a table eating; a man is playing a musical instrument; a man is bent over with age; a woman is overcome with grief; two monks are sitting under a tree, meditating, practicing the pathway of liberation.

So there is a great range of possibilities in this realm—all the characteristic human experiences of the other, more specialized realms, also exist here. Buddhism teaches that the human realm is the most favorable realm to be born into, because in the human realm we have all the possibilities of the other realms as well, and yet the best opportunities for realization and liberation. The Buddha figure teaching in the human realm is holding a staff in his right hand, symbolizing the dharma teaching, and a begging bowl in his other hand, symbolizing the practice of humility and nonattachment.

* * *

Next to the human realm, at the top of the wheel, between 11 and 1, is the heaven world, a realm inhabited by angelic spirits or devas (“shining ones”), and by humans living an existence like these blessed spirits. When, in the bardo of rebirth, the soul is about to incarnate, he or she is advised to delay the descent into form as long as possible; but when it becomes impossible to delay any longer, it is advised to choose to be born either into the deva realm or, best of all, the human realm. In the deva realm, the humans living there together with angelic beings are depicted in a gorgeous temple-palace, in a garden setting with flowers and fruit trees, musicians and singers playing, costumed dancers, people bathing in a pool. Multicolored streamers are descending down from above and flying angels are soaring through the skies.

People in this heavenly realm are blessed with happiness and good fortune, spending their lives and their time enjoying the delights of the senses and cultivating aesthetic experiences. They are devoted to the pursuit of sensual pleasure, including the ecstatic states to be found through spiritual practices, to the creative arts, and to aesthetic enjoyment of all kinds. We are in these heavenly states of consciousness when we’re having “high” experiences—in the ecstasies of erotic union, or when inspired by our creative genius, or when in blissful contemplation of natural or aesthetic beauty.

Unlike the Christian conception of heaven as a state we can only attain to in the afterlife, depending on our behavior and God’s grace, this heavenly realm is regarded by the Buddhists as merely one of the six realms of unconscious, conditioned existence—albeit a very enjoyable one. We may indeed find ourselves from time to time in this heaven realm both during earthly life and afterwards. According to the core Buddhist teaching of impermanence, one could say the beings in this realm are living off their karmic savings account.

When their good karma is exhausted, they will devolve into one of the more challenging realms of existence that offer opportunities for learning and growing. Adapting his teaching method to each realm, the Buddha figure teaching in this realm is shown with a stringed instrument, inspiring the beings dwelling in it to listen to the subtle melodies and harmonies of the unconditioned realms (“pure lands”), beyond the dreamlike world we take as real.

Shakespeare’s Prospero, in The Tempest, was perhaps speaking of our experience in these transitory heaven realms when he said, to his fellow actors and the audience,

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air.

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yes, all that is inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a trace behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

* * *

Next to the heaven realm, between 1 and 3 on the wheel of samsara, is the realm of the asuras. Often translated as “jealous gods” or “titans,” the asuras are spirits of domination and violence. This realm of existence is marked by constant violence, fighting, aggression, rage, competition, and conflict. The asuras are pictured as heavily armed (one could say, psychically “armored”) warriors on horseback, roaring into battle with the sounds and gestures of threat and attack. Two groups of warriors are fighting each other. Between their realm and the heaven realm is a large tree: while the blessed deva spirits and their human companions are enjoying the delicious fruits of this tree, the angry asuras are attempting to steal the fruits, and some of them are cutting down the tree. Dead bodies are lying on the ground.

Humans, when in this asura realm, are driven by ambition and envy, caught up in competition, aggression, and struggle, whether in the business world, the military, the criminal subculture, sports, international relations, or social, interpersonal, and even sexual and familial interactions. In the United States, which has been called a “culture of violence,” this realm dominates the media and entertainment—almost as if the entire population is caught up in a kind of collective trance of rage and violence. Any of us are in this realm as a state of consciousness when we are in the mode of angry conflict and competitive struggle. If we die while in a state of rage and violence, we will find ourselves in the afterdeath realm of asura spirits for a while.

In The Roots of War and Domination, I wrote about the asuras in relation to the larger issue of global violence and war, as well as ecological destruction:

In an image eerily symbolic of our present ecological catastrophe, where industrial megacorporations backed by military gangs are devouring the rain forests and other biosphere resources, the asuras are cutting down the fruit-laden giant tree that the deva gods are contemplating and enjoying…The asuras correspond most closely to what I (and other writers) have called dominator or counter-evolutionary or “dark force” spirits (Metzner, 2008, p. 47).

The asura spirits, as well as the human beings inspired or dominated by them, are by their nature unreceptive to teachings of non-violence, compassion, or peace. So it’s interesting that the Buddha figure teaching in this realm is holding up a sword—symbolizing the sharp edge of what is called “discriminative wisdom.” We can regard this as a teaching that those dominated by the urge to fight and compete would do well to use their minds to discriminate what it is they are fighting for or against—and checking that with their true intention.

* * *

Between 3 and 5 on the wheel of samsara is the realm of animals. The existence of this realm does not mean that humans reincarnate as animals, as popular misconceptions of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs would have it. While it is true that the myth of the ten avatars (“descents”) of the god Vishnu includes stories of his life as a fish, a tortoise, a boar, a half-human lion, and a pre-hominid ape (called “dwarf”)—and then several human incarnations—these stories are best conceived as a mythopoetic expression of the story of human evolution, through its vertebrate, reptilian, mammalian, primate, and hominid stages preceding the human. Similarly, although some of the popular versions of the life story of the Buddha include stories of his reputed prior incarnations as different animals, these too are considered popular teaching stories, metaphorically illustrating his karmic attainments.

The teachings of both Eastern and Western inner traditions are clear: the incarnation line of humans is distinct from that of animals—not superior or inferior in any moral sense, but different in their adaptations and learnings. Each species is uniquely superior in its evolutionary adaptation to its particular ecological niche. Animals are said to be the incarnation of a collective soul-spirit guiding the evolution of the whole species, whereas humans are unique in that each human being is the individual incarnation of an immortal soul. This is the source of humans’ fantastic creativity, the communication by means of symbolic sounds and images, and the capacity for spiritual transcendence.

In the wheel of samsara, the sector depicting animals shows a peaceful scene of animals grazing or resting. There is a hunter pursuing a deer, portraying the human practice of eating animal flesh for food—but other than that, there is no violence. This is a “peaceable kingdom,” and the Buddha figure teaching in this realm is making a gesture of peace. Since animal consciousness in general is focused on instinctual survival for self, offspring, and herd, we can say that human beings are in the realm of animal consciousness when their intention and attention is focused on survival programs for self and kin, engaged with the bare necessities of “making a living” and “raising a family,” or when carrying out the routines of work. We are decidedly not “acting like an animal” when engaged in brutal and insensitive behavior against members of our own species—this is behavior more characteristic of the asura realm.

* * *

Opposite the heaven realm, at the nadir of the great wheel of birth and death, between 5 and 7, is the hell world, filled with beings who are undergoing unspeakable agonies, torment, and suffering. The demonic iconography of this realm in the wheel of samsara rivals the medieval Christian imagery of hell in the outrageous creativity and variety of depicted torment. There are burning fires of course, but also a pool of water that turns into flames as a hapless soul drinks from it; there are icy mountain regions where naked humans are huddling in cold isolation; various demons are cutting, splitting, disemboweling, and dismembering bodies, sticking them with sharp spikes, pouring foul liquids down their mouths, impaling them on giant thorn trees, and so forth.

This is a realm marked by pain and suffering, by hopelessness and helplessness. In real-world terms this is the state of consciousness of people who are being tortured, maimed, or injured; people suffering in war (“war is hell”) or natural catastrophe; those racked with intractable pain and burning fever; the psychic torment of psychosis and depression; or the cold isolation of imprisonment and abandonment.

Individuals with authoritarian religious beliefs may think and feel, when in this realm of experience, that they are somehow being punished or damned. The difference between the Christian and the Buddhist conceptions of hell lies here in the principle of impermanence. The Buddhist hell is not a realm of eternal damnation, like the Christian hell. It is rather more like the Christian idea of purgatory, where the suffering is a working out of karmic consequences of past actions, with a definite, not indefinite time course.

The Buddha figure teaching the spirits in this realm is, paradoxically, holding a flame—indicating perhaps that we must learn to regard the hellish, tormenting fires as purifying fire (the operation the old alchemists called their purificatio). There are also compassionate spirit helpers, one holding a ladder, another a rope, for the damned who can reach them to climb out of hell.

The hell realm, like the kingdom of heaven, is first and foremost within. We are in hellish states of consciousness when we feel victimized, hopelessly and helplessly depressed, or inescapably trapped in abusive or oppressive situations. Sometimes the internal hell is also manifest in outer circumstances. But the inner and the outer realms are independent—one can be in outwardly benign or neutral circumstances and inwardly in an agony of torment. Someone calmly passing us in the street may be walking through a private, interior hell.

The hell realm, like the others, may encompass the collective consciousness of a whole group or community. I remember once, years ago, I was visiting with a couple living in Los Angeles, who were experiencing a lot of painful conflict in their lives. When I slept in their house, I saw, in the dream state, that underneath the entire city block in which they were living was an astral hell realm, complete with nasty-looking demons poking people in vats of burning oil, etcetera. I could easily imagine how these energies would affect the subconscious mind of the whole neighborhood. I advised my friends to consider moving away.

* * *

Then there is a realm, between 7 and 9 on the clockface, inhabited by beings called pretas. This term is often translated as “hungry ghosts”—the “spirits of frustrated craving.” The image here is of beings who have huge bellies, symbolically showing their hunger and craving, yet narrow slit-like throats, which prevent them from ever satisfying their thirst or hunger. They are always needy, but forever unsatisfied—like in that classic Rolling Stones song “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Some of the preta-humans are being pursued by an armed figure with a rope and weapon, clearly intending to enslave them.

It’s important to recognize that this is not the realm of people who are really hungry and starving due to environmental and social deprivation—such people would not be portrayed with thin, constricted throats. The imagery of “hungry ghosts” is a symbolic depiction of addiction and what used to be called “neurosis”—a kind of obsessive absorption with one’s own needs and wants, along with an inability to find satisfaction or enjoyment. The preta realm is the realm of drug addictions, alcoholism, overeating, and eating disorders (bulimia, anorexia)—in which physical thirst and hunger are metaphorically and psychically equated with emotional hunger and deprivation, and sometimes even with spiritual craving, a kind of thirst for wholeness or transcendence.1

The teaching Buddha figure in this realm is making the mudra of giving generosity (palm outward, fingers pointing down) with his right hand, and in his left hand holding a kind of cup—perhaps symbolic of true spiritual nourishment. A beautiful touch is that another bodhisattva figure is holding threads attached to the heads of the pretas, and pulling them upward—as if to say to the poor souls fixated on the immediate satisfaction of their desires, “Look up, there’s a whole world of experience and delight around you and before you.”

The Twelvefold Chain of Interdependent Origination

In the temple mandala paintings of the wheel of samsara, the whole wheel, with its six worlds and the three symbolic toxic drives in the hub, is held in the jaws and claws of a gigantic, demonic figure. This is Mahakala, the great deity spirit that personifies the entropic destructive forces of time. Around the outside rim of the wheel of samsara are twelve images symbolically showing the twelve links in the chain of “dependent co-origination”—basically, how everything hangs together. The Sanskrit name for the doctrine of the twelvefold chain, encircling the wheel on its outer rim, is pratitya-samutpada. This has been variously translated as “dependent origination” or “dependent co-arising” or “codependent origination” or “interdependent co-arising.” Here the term “codependent” has a normal, not a pathological connotation, as it does in the addiction field, where it refers to the addiction-supporting behavior of the spouse or companion of an addict.

The mandala is being held up like a mirror to the viewer, as if to say, “These are your possible lives, your worlds of existence, driven as you are through births and deaths by the three primary forces, and conditioned as you are by the twelve mutual interdependencies.” It is clearly a cyclical view of time and causality, in which we return again and again into the same recurring realms of existence, until we are finally able to free ourselves from our attachments and attain liberation.

The teaching of the twelvefold chain of interconnection is considered the foundational teaching of causality in the Mahayana Buddhist worldview. This is quite a different conception from the accepted Western linear, dynamical model of causality. The latter is exemplified by the billiard ball situation, in which ball A hits ball B and causes it to move; or by the germ theory of disease, according to which the singular cause of a disease is the invading bacteria or virus.

Buddhist philosopher and deep ecologist Joanna Macy has coined the term “mutual causality” to describe the interdependence principle that is at the heart of this Buddhist model; and she has shown that this principle can also be found in the Western philosophy of science known as living systems theory. In systems theory, the fundamental unit of analysis is not objects, or atoms, or even particles—it is relations or connections (Macy, 1991).

In the Buddhist wheel of life doctrine, all phenomena, everything that happens in the world, both internal and external realities, are linked together in twelve identifiable segments that tend to arise together and pass away together. When we examine these links, as portrayed symbolically, we shall see that some of them refer to thought processes and subjective impulses, while some refer to specific outer events. The logical separation between mind and matter that has frustrated Western philosophers for centuries is completely transcended in this view of relational interdependencies.

Turning now to a discussion of this twelvefold causal chain, the pratitya-samutpada, I will briefly summarize the meaning of each link or phase in the chain of connections. Each has a Sanskrit name, and in the paintings is illustrated by a symbolic image. This symbolic imagery is very interesting and perhaps gives us a better sense of what the Buddhists meant than an English translation of psychological concepts and processes—which would inevitably be colored by the translator’s own preconceptions. Again, the sequence should not be thought of in a linear way, as in “x always leads to y.” Rather, they are mutually interdependent phenomena, arising and falling away together.

Each of the six realms or worlds is associated with three of the links of the chain—one at the beginning transition, one in the middle, and one at the ending transition to the next world on the wheel. We will start with the human realm: the first link here is called bhava (“becoming”) and is symbolized by a couple having sexual intercourse; the second link is jati (“birth”) and the image shows a woman giving birth; the third link is marana (“death”) and is symbolized by a corpse being carried to a funeral pyre. So here we have the basic framework of a human life—from conception to birth to death, in which all the joys and sorrows, challenges and opportunities, are encountered, giving us, as the Buddhists say, the most favorable conditions for enlightenment and liberation.

In this worldview the sequence of conception, birth, and death refers not only to our existence in a physical human body, but also to any living process—an idea, a creative project, an organization, a relationship, a journey—each of which follows upon the conception of that process. And after the beginning and birth of that process, there is inevitably, after a period of time, the eventual ending and therefore death of that same process.

Moving clockwise around the wheel, the next realm is the heaven realm, and so the image of the dying body is at the threshold of the human to the heaven world. This is consistent with the teaching of The Tibetan Book of the Dead—that at the time of dying we have the opportunity to enter the celestial realms. However, under ordinary conditions, as shown on the wheel of samsara, the image of dying is followed by the image of a blind person feeling her way along with a stick, in some versions being assisted by another person. The Sanskrit term for this phase, avidya (literally, “non-knowing”), is usually translated as “ignorance.” It is the blissful ignorance of not recognizing the transience of all phenomena, including one’s own pleasurable states of unconsciousness.

Here is the startling paradox of the Buddhist teachings concerning the heaven realm, so different from the Western Christian view. It’s not a realm where we are rewarded for good deeds. We may indeed enjoy a peaceful, happy existence in this realm for a time after death, following the workings of karma. But it is a conditioned realm, and like all conditioned realms, it is impermanent—and so after a time, we will fall again into one of the other realms.

The next image in the sequence, on the threshold of the heaven world and the world of the asuras, is that of a potter making a clay pot. The name of this phase or link in the causal chain is samskara—“karmic connection patterns.” Karmic thought patterns and reaction patterns are formed and thereby given reality, in the same way a potter shapes his pot with the actions of his hands. From a condition of blindness and unconsciousness, we create our karmic destiny through the patterned activities of mind (thought) and body (action). Our thought patterns may connect us to the peaceful heaven world, return us to the ordinary human world—or they may take another turn, driven by jealousy and envy, into the realm of the predatory and violent asuras.

On the cusp of the asura realm is the link on the chain known as vijñana, symbolized by the image of a monkey grasping a branch to land on. Vijñana is conceptual thought, the “monkey-mind,” always grasping for connections. To “grasp” is “to understand,” “to comprehend,” to seize and hold mentally, as if with hands or feet or prehensile tail. When we make or “get” a certain interpretation of reality, we might say, “I’ve got it,” or “I can grasp it,” or “I’ve got the hang of it.” We humans are primates with overactive minds. We create karmic patterns through our actions and our thoughts, and we’re constantly looking to make or grasp new interpretations of reality. These activities may trigger envy, jealousy, and the like, plunging us into the asura realm of competitive struggle.

The next step after monkey-mind thinking is nama-rupa—literally, “name and form,” their indissoluble linkage symbolized by the image of two men in a boat, moving up and down together with the waves in the stream. Some commentators interpret nama-rupa as referring to a kind of dualistic parallelism of mind and body. However, in my opinion, it makes more sense to see this as referring to the two types of thinking, linguistic and imagistic, especially since it follows upon the phase of conceptual-mind grasping connections. Our thinking is always dualistic: there are always images that go with the words, and labels that go with the pictures. Recent Western neuropsychology has emphasized the twofold nature of brain function, with the left brain hemisphere involved with language and sequence, and the right hemisphere with images and patterns. The monkey-mind is constantly generating both verbal interpretations and pictorial representations, closely associated with each other.

Two-fold thinking is followed by, or accompanied by, six-fold perception. This phase, called sadayatana, situated next to the animal realm, is symbolized by a house with six windows. This refers to the six sensory perceptual systems, through which we obtain information about the external world, as a person residing in a house obtains information from the outside world through the windows. While the West recognizes five organs or channels of sense perception, both Buddhist and Vedanta psychology regard “mind” as a sixth perceptual channel. This is analogous to what some psychologists call the “sixth sense,” or “intuition,” or “second sight,” in which information or knowledge is perceived directly, rather than through a process of reasoning.

The association of the image of six senses with animal consciousness is consistent with the fact that many species of animals have evolved superior and specialized sensory functions and structures. We need only think of the raptor birds with their farseeing vision, the canines with their superior sense of smell, reptiles with their mysterious capacity to taste the air, migrating animals with their sense of direction, or whales and dolphins with their extraordinary hearing range and ability to navigate underwater by sound.

After the image of the house with six windows, symbolizing the multiple possibilities of sense perception, the next link on the twelvefold chain is called sparsa, “sense contact,” the unmediated contact between sense organ and sense object. Sparsa is symbolized on the wheel by an image of two lovers kissing, and thus we might call it “pleasurable contact.” This is a beautiful and touching image, reminiscent of Zen Buddhist art, for the bare immediate contact of our senses with the perceived world—a contact that can be filled with delight.

In the “codependently originating” cycle of phenomena, every sensory contact event tends to be immediately accompanied or followed by a judgment. We seem driven to decide whether the sensation we are having is pleasant, painful, or neutral—whether we like it, dislike it, or are indifferent. This judgment is however an overlay, something over and above the pure sensation, and it functions to fixate the experience. Here is the crucial turning point described in William Blake’s verse from his Auguries of Innocence:

He who binds to himself a joy,

Doth its winged life destroy.

But he who kisses the joy as it flies,

Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

With the phase of like or dislike feeling-judgment, called vedana, we are in the hell realm. The startlingly provocative symbolic image of vedana is that of a man with an arrow stuck in his eye. It represents what one could call “judgment fixation,” a painfully fixed focus of attention on some sense object, either desirable or repellent. The emotionally reactive judgment fixates our attention on this sense object, whether we experience it as pleasurable or painful—or both at the same time. Fixated attachments and judgments can bring us readily into hellish states of consciousness.

In addictions and compulsions, the normal capacity to focus attention on what we want becomes the obsessive, exclusive fixation of attention on what we crave. Thus the next step in the circular chain, at the transition into the realm of the addicted pretas, is symbolized by a man being served a drink. The word trishna for this phase is usually translated as “craving” or “thirst” or “desire.” But it is significant that the man is being given a drink. In other words, it’s not just thirst or wanting or desire, but satisfied thirst or desire. As the wheel of births and deaths keeps turning, there do occur real satisfactions of real needs.

This phase corresponds to what psychologists call reinforcement: associative learning takes place when a given response is immediately followed by, reinforced by, food, drink, or another valued sense experience. So when the craving is reinforced by the satisfaction of the hunger or thirst or lust, then the process of codependent origination keeps moving along. In an addiction, the individual does not cycle through the whole process, moving through desire and craving to birth and becoming. When we’re fixated and attached, we keep repeating the compulsive behavior that satisfies the craving, looping back around the cycle again and again, instead of going on to the next event, which might bring new and different sources of satisfaction, as well as free expression of our creativity.

The next phase, correlated spatially on the wheel with the world of the pretas, is called upadana, “clinging” or “grasping.” The symbolic image is of a man picking fruit from a tree. He’s gathering nourishment. He’s actively gathering and collecting the sense objects that he wants to incorporate. Whereas trishna is the receiving phase of need satisfaction, upadana is the active phase of appetitive behavior and sensation seeking. There is an investment of emotional energy in the pursuit of a desired object. This parallels the process described by William James as “appropriation,” where the self appropriates the sense objects it desires to itself. In sexual interactions as well, the language of desiring or wanting sense contact slips easily into the egotistical language of taking, holding, incorporating, and possessing.

So we have the following interconnected sequence of events: bare sense contact is followed by judgment fixation, which is followed by satisfied thirst, which leads to further taking and grasping. As the Buddhists say, “When this arises, that arises.” After desiring and grasping, the next step in the sequence is conceiving and becoming, symbolized by the image of two lovers having sexual intercourse, at the edge of the human world. And so, in an act of connection and conception, we enter again into the familiar human realm, with its challenges and opportunities. The great wheel of interconnected birthings and dyings continues.

A human life on Earth, or any developmental process in any realm, begins with a conception and is brought into the light of day through a birthing, eventually, in time, to end with a falling away or dying. We may indeed pass after death temporarily into the celestial realms of the blessed spirits. But in the normal unconsciousness of human nature, we experience the heavenly states only fleetingly and in blissful ignorance.

As creative impulses start to shape our thoughts, and thoughts lead to actions, our agile monkey-mind reaches for ever-more connections. “When this arises, that arises.” We compete for better and more effective ways to grasp and make things. If envy and jealousy dominate our minds, we are drawn into the realm of the aggressive, violent spirits. However, from reaching out and grasping for connections, we may also pass on to seeing the pairing of names and forms, of words and images. Like other animals then, we find ourselves in the mode of instinctual survival, perceiving and reacting to our environment through our sensory systems.

Once we are in the house with six windows (our body-mind sensory apparatus), then we may come to enjoy the pleasures of sense contact with the world—like lovers enjoying their kiss (“kissing the joy as it flies”). If the innocence of sense contact is overlaid by judgments of good or bad, beautiful or ugly, our perception freezes in fixation (“binding to oneself the joy”), like an arrow stuck in the eye—and we may become trapped for a time in the hell realms.

If we can move on to drinking to satisfy thirst, the desire is satisfied, however temporarily, and we reach out to gather more fruits, to satisfy ever-new desires for ever-new stimulus satisfaction. Repeatedly frustrated and dissatisfied by our sense experiences, we may find ourselves in the realm of the obsessive “hungry ghosts,” and from there, it is a simple step to once again make the primal linkage of sex-conception. The model is telling us that the inherent structure of the perceptual systems leads directly to the processes of attachment, which in turn leads to new becoming, new births, and new deaths.

Our sense organs themselves function the way they do because the mind functions the way it does, constantly co-generating interpretations and representations. Our blind, unconscious actions create karmic patterns, our minds make interpretations of reality, and our senses give us input about reality, which leads to craving, attachment, and continued conditioned existence. That is the Buddhist view of how our world of reality is constantly recreated and maintained.

This means that we have, at every moment in our lives, the opportunity, again and again, to choose to think and act autonomously and differently, different than the predominant conditioned reactions. Doing so, we can move more fully into the truly human world, the realm of “precious opportunity.” And the precious opportunity that comes with living mindfully in the human world is the promise of step-by-step liberation from the chains of unconscious karmic attachments.