The Foundations of Buddhism

No Self I 59

This version of the formula introduces some of the technical

terminology of Buddhist meditation which will be discussed in

the next chapter. But what we must understand here is that Bud-

dhist thought envisages that there are essentially two currents of

the mind, one leading towards the arising of suffering, 'and one

leading towards its cessation; both function according to the pro-

cess of dependent arising, since this describes the way things are,

whether or not there is any buddha or Buddhist teaching in the

world to draw it to our attention. The law of dependent arising

is the way things are, it is Dharma-even when there is no bud-

dha in the world to point this out.^42

The chain of dependent arising is sometimes referred to in

Buddhist texts as 'the wheel of becoming' (bhava-cakra/-cakka),

There is an old tradition of representing this graphically. Indeed,

instructions for this are included in the Mfilasarvastivadin Vinaya,

although nowadays the tradition is continued only in Tibetan

Buddhism (see Figure I ).^43 The wheel itself is shown clutched in

the hands and jaws of Yama, the god of death. The outer circle

shows the twelve links: a blind man (ignorance), a potter fash-

ioning a pot (formations), a monkey picking a fruit (conscious-

ness), a boat on a journey (mind and body), a house with six

windows (the six sense-spheres), a couple embracing (sense con-

tact), a man struck in the eye by an arrow (feeling), a man drink-

ing (thirst), a man taking hold of a fruit (grasping), a pregnant

woman (becoming), a woman in labour (birth), a man carrying

a corpse to a charnel ground (old age and death). The next cir-

cle in shows six basic realms of rebirth: at the top, the heavenly

realms of the gods, moving clockwise, the jealous gods, animals,

hells, hungry ghosts, and humans. Moving inwards again we see

beings rising (on the left) and falling (on the right). At the hub,

driving the whole process, are a cock (greed), a snake (hatred)

and a pig (ignorance).^44

Did the Buddha deny the existence of the self?

I have been discussing just what is involved in the Buddhist denial
of the self, and some of the possible philosophical difficulties that