Skills of the Dhamma Wheel
November 10, 2009
Every time we chant the Sutta on Setting the Dhamma Wheel in Motion, I like to look at the Dhamma wheel up on the wall, the one my father made years back: It’s going on 13 years now. It’s got twelve spokes, which symbolize one of the passages in the sutta where the Buddha goes through the four noble truths and the three types of knowledge for each truth: knowing the truth, knowing the duty appropriate to that truth, and then knowing that you’ve completed that duty. Four truths, three levels of knowledge, three times four is twelve: That’s the wheel in the Dhamma wheel. And it should form the basic frame for the way we look at our practice. It’s how we should frame our attention to things.