The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (387 page)

3
In Buddhism, ‘being’, every kind of manifestation in the three domains of appearance (triloka: see
LOKA
). It is also the tenth link in chain of conditioned-arising (
paticca-samup-p
da
).
4
For Jains, bh
va, with
dravya
, enters deeply into the dynamic of lay and ascetic life. In the quest to disentangle
j
va
from
karma
, bh
va represents the spiritual elements whose priority must be secured over against the physical constituents of material appearance (dravya).

 
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(Skt., the ‘wheel of existence’). Buddhist, and especially Tibetan, painting which portrays the relentless process of recurrent birth, death, and rebirth,
sa
s
ra
, as a wheel. Pictures on the wheel convey the conditions of sa
s
ra together with the moral and mental factors which cause the individual to remain within sa
s
ra. The wheel is shown clasped by the hands and feet and being devoured by a demon monster,
M
ra
, symbolizing the all-pervasive nature of death and impermanence.
According to the
Divy
vad
na
, the Buddha himself instituted the drawing of the bhavacakra as a pedagogic device for the instruction of the non-literate in Buddhist truths. The earliest known example of the bhavacakra is a fresco (c.6th cent. CE) of
Aja
.