Elements of Buddhist Iconography c4.75

c4.75

In monastic Buddhism and from an edifying point of view, stress is naturally laid upon the Dharmacakra only as a Word-wheel to be set in motion to the end that men may find their Way (*magga, mārga*), and here the cosmic significance of the Dharmacakra as an embodiment of the Year, "Eniautos Daimon," is thus obscured; it is only gradually brought out again that the revolution of the Principial and Existential Wheels is interdependent and indivisible, in the last analysis one and the same revolution. 69 That is developed in the *Saddharma Puṇḍarīka*, III, 33, where he who preached the Word at Sārnāth and on Mt Gṛdhrakūṭa is addressed as having "set in motion the Principial Wheel which is the origin and passing away of the factors of existence," *dharmacakraṃ pravartesi . . . skandhānāṃ udayaṃ vyayam*. 70 That identity of Word-wheel and World-wheel — Vajra-dhātu and Garbha-kośa-dhātu in Shingon formulation — is equally implied in the well-known formula, *Yaḥ kleśaḥ so bodhi, yaḥ saṃsāras tan nirvāṇam*, "Error and Awakening, World-flux and Extinction, are the Same," cf. Maitreya-Asaṅga, *Sūtrālaṃkāra*, XIII, 12 (Commentary), avidyā ca bodhís caikam, "Experience and gnosis are one," 71 and in the doctrine that Omniscience, sine qua non of Nirvāṇa, is the realization of the sameness of all principles, SPt., p. 133 — the same, sama, but differently seen by the eye of flesh (māṃsa-cakṣus, viz. the eye’s intrinsic faculty in the sensible world), the angelic eye (divya-cakṣus, viz. the mind’s eye in the intelligible world), and the eye of wisdom (prajñā-, dhamma-, ananta, or buddha-cakṣus, viz. the Comprehensor’s eye in the world of gnosis).