Chakra
Chakra
!In meditation, chakras are often visualised in different ways, such as a lotus flower, or a disc containing a particular deity.
Etymology
Lexically, chakra is the Indic reflex of an ancestral Indo-European form kʷékʷlos, whence also "wheel" and "cycle" (Ancient Greek: κύκλος, romanized: kýklos). It has both literal and metaphorical uses, as in the "wheel of time" or "wheel of dharma", such as in Rigveda hymn verse 1.164.11, pervasive in the earliest Vedic texts.
Etymology
In Buddhism, especially in Theravada, the Pali noun cakka connotes "wheel". Within the Buddhist scriptures referred to as the Tripitaka, Shakyamuni Buddha variously refers the "dhammacakka", or "wheel of dharma", connoting that this dharma, universal in its advocacy, should bear the marks characteristic of any temporal dispensation. Shakyamuni Buddha spoke of freedom from cycles in and of themselves, whether karmic, reincarnative, liberative, cognitive or emotional.