May all beings be liberated

Sources:

lotus brush: [link]
paper: [link]
wheel of life: [link]

This is a picture of wheel of life, circled by three sentences of "gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā" in Devanagari. One way to translate "gate, gate..." is (from Wikipedia) "gone gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, all hail!"

The wheel of life represents the cycle of birth and rebirth and existence in samsara. This concept comes from Tibetan Buddhis tradition. The explanation is quite long, but basically there are 6 realms of life (from the top of the wheel, clockwise): deva realm, human realm, hungry ghost realm, hell realm, animal realm, and ashura realm. All creatures, bound by karma, are born and reborn again in these realms. They experience unhappiness/unsatisfactoriness (dukkha). More explanation can be seen here: [link] Buddha spends 40 years of his life to teach us a way to be free from this dukkha: The Four Noble Truth, The Noble Eightfold Path, and so on.

"Gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā" is mentioned in Heart Sutra. Briefly, the sutra describes the experience of liberation of the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteśvara, as a result of insight gained while engaged in deep meditation to awaken the faculty of prajña (wisdom). More of this is here: [link]

So, what I want to say with my picture is: may all beings be liberated from samsara, and "go beyond" to achieve enlightenment (become Buddhas). I hope it conveys the message well

If you have any comments or questions, feel free to post below!

Gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā


P.S: If you post my picture in your blog, or somewhere else, or use it as a stock, please comment and leave the link. It is not like you will go to jail if you don't do it; I just like to see what other people do with my picture. Thanx