Two wheels, constantly mixed up. The dharmachakra is the eight-spoked wheel on the Indian flag and on temple roofs: a diagram of the path out. The bhavachakra, the wheel of life, is the crowded circular painting clutched in the jaws of a demon: a diagram of the trap. One is the map, the other is the territory you are trying to leave.
The dharma wheel
The oldest Buddhist symbol, in use long before anyone depicted the Buddha as a person. To "turn the wheel of dharma" is to teach, and the first turning was the sermon at Sarnath.
The eight spokes are the Noble Eightfold Path, and each is a separate discipline rather than a commandment: right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. "Right" here translates samma, which carries the sense of complete or well-aimed rather than morally correct — closer to a well-struck note than to obedience.
They divide into three groups. Understanding and intention are wisdom. Speech, action and livelihood are ethical conduct. Effort, mindfulness and concentration are mental discipline. And the path is not a sequence: you do not finish speech and move on to livelihood, you work all eight at once, badly, for years.
The hub is discipline, the still centre the whole thing turns on. The rim is the mindfulness that holds the parts together. The roundness is the completeness of the teaching. Wheels with other spoke counts exist — four for the Noble Truths, twelve for the links of dependent origination — but eight is standard.
The wheel of life, which is the other one
The bhavachakra is a Tibetan teaching painting and it is not a symbol so much as an entire syllabus in one image. Held in the jaws and claws of Yama, lord of death, because everything inside it is subject to time.
At the hub, three animals chasing each other: a pig, a snake and a cockerel — ignorance, aversion and craving — each biting the next's tail, because each produces the others. The next ring shows beings rising and falling. The six segments are the realms of rebirth: gods, demigods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, hell beings. The human realm is considered the lucky one, not because it is pleasant but because it contains just enough suffering to motivate and just enough ease to allow practice.
The outer rim has twelve panels, the twelve links of dependent origination, which is the mechanism by which one moment of ignorance produces the next round. That rim is the part worth studying; the realms are the part everyone photographs.
Telling them apart, quickly
Eight spokes, gold, no people in it, on a flag or a roof: dharma wheel, and it means the path. Crowded with figures, six wedges, a monster holding the edges: wheel of life, and it means the cycle you are in. If someone is wearing one as jewellery it is the first. If it is a wall hanging in a monastery it is usually the second.
Reading on
For the teaching the spokes encode, Buddhism for beginners covers the four truths and the eightfold path properly, and whether Buddhism is a religion and whether it has gods handle the two questions everyone asks next. For the Zen branch, Zen for beginners and koans explained. Daily practice sits in daily Buddhist readings, and 365 Days of Zen (ours, flagged) runs 1,500 years of the Zen tradition one page a day.
Common questions
What do the eight spokes of the dharma wheel represent?
The Noble Eightfold Path: right understanding, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration. They group into wisdom, ethical conduct and mental discipline, and they are practised together rather than in sequence.
What is the difference between the dharma wheel and the wheel of life?
The dharma wheel is an eight-spoked emblem of the path out of suffering. The wheel of life is a detailed Tibetan painting of the cycle of rebirth, held in the jaws of Yama, showing six realms and the twelve links. One is the map out, the other is the trap.
What are the three animals at the centre of the wheel of life?
A pig, a snake and a cockerel — ignorance, aversion and craving — each biting the tail of the next, because each one generates the others. They sit at the hub because they are what keeps the whole wheel turning.
What does the hub of the dharma wheel mean?
Discipline: the still centre everything else turns on. The rim represents the mindfulness that holds the spokes together, and the circular form the completeness of the teaching.
Why is the human realm the best one to be born in?
Because it contains enough suffering to motivate practice and enough ease to permit it. The god realm is too comfortable to prompt anyone to look for a way out, and the lower realms are too overwhelming to allow it.
Does "right" in the Eightfold Path mean morally correct?
Not quite. It renders samma, closer to complete, well-aimed or properly aligned. Think of a well-struck note rather than obedience to a rule — the path describes skill being developed, not commandments being kept.