The Wheel of Sharp Weapons

The *Wheel of Sharp Weapons* is a classic text of Tibetan Buddhism, attributed to Dharmarakshita, offering a profound teaching on karma and the law of cause and effect. The “wheel” represents the consequences of one’s own actions, circling back with precision — like a sharp weapon returning to strike the one who hurled it.

This teaching emphasises personal responsibility: harmful actions motivated by self-centeredness inevitably ripen into suffering, while wholesome actions bear fruits of peace and well-being. The wheel does not punish or reward arbitrarily; it simply reflects the unrelenting precision of dependent origination.

By recognising this, the practitioner moves beyond blaming external circumstances or fate. The difficulties encountered in life are not seen as misfortunes imposed from outside but as opportunities to uncover one’s own deeply embedded patterns of selfishness, anger, or greed. Every painful experience becomes a mirror, revealing hidden tendencies that can be transformed through mindful attention and compassion.

Importantly, the *Wheel of Sharp Weapons* is not a teaching of despair but of empowerment. Since suffering arises from one’s own actions, one also holds the key to its cessation. By cutting through self-cherishing and cultivating altruism, wisdom, and compassion, the wheel turns from a source of suffering into a vehicle for awakening.

In this way, even life’s sharpest blows become part of the path — not obstacles, but guides pointing directly to the work that remains to be done.

“Whatever harm we have done to others returns to ourselves like a wheel of sharp weapons circling through the sky.”
— *The Wheel of Sharp Weapons*, Dharmarakshita