This week’s meditation session is led by Kimberly Brown and the theme is Awaken. The guided meditation begins at 10:31.

This painting of the Wheel of Life depicts the concept of cyclical existence. Awakening through enlightenment breaks the cycle, leading to liberation from suffering and to a higher state of consciousness.

The Wheel of Life illustrates the concept of rebirth (samsara). Yama, the lord of death, grips a wheel driven by three animals, representing the mental poisons—attachment (rooster), anger (snake), and ignorance (pig)—at its hub.

In the next circle from the center, people move upward to higher states of consciousness and downward to afflicted states. Their actions, polluted by the poisons, propel them in a continuous cycle of rebirth in the six realms of existence, depicted in the large segments around the two inner circles. These are the realms of gods and demi-gods (top left), humans (top right), animals (lower left), hungry ghosts (lower right), and hells (bottom). The wheel’s outer rim is the symbolic chain of causality that binds this closed circle with no clear way out. 

The Buddha discerned a pathway out of the cycle of samsara. That is why the Buddha appears both outside the wheel, at the upper right, and within it, pointing the way out by teaching the dharma.