法輪

The Buddha's teachings are always described as the Dharma wheel. When someone teaches, he is said to turn the Dharma wheel. There are at least three meanings of the wheel:

1. A wheel can grind. The Dharma wheel can grind up all the 'side doors and non-Buddhist paths', and pulverizes and destroys their erroneous and improper teachings.
2. A wheel also transports. The Dharma wheel can transport living beings from the shore of birth and death to the other shore of Nirvāṇa.
3. As the Buddha-truth which is able to crush all evil, and which rolls on from man to man, place to place and age to age, to turn the wheel means to preach Buddha-truth.

See also Cakra.