I like the wheel so much I need two of them, some people need four but two is enough for me. The wheel is pretty much synonymous with 'progress' and is among man's most significant and oldest inventions. In the West we are too busy 'advancing' ourselves into an ever more tangible society that we have not noticed how much we have regressed and disconnected ourselves from all the essences that make up our true human nature. On a very simple level, when one considers our physical nature we love to use cars for the simplest errands and we always use elevators or lifts where we can. We do this even though we would hate to be physically frail when we are older. While we marvel at our brilliance in attaching one invention to another, such as the motor to the wheel, we are in fact complicit in making our own fears reality. During my time on the road the theme of the wheel has popped up elsewhere.
The wheel is synonymous with transport and it was Gandhi who lamented the invention of the locomotive. He viewed it is as a means of transporting cheap local goods to the dearest foreign market. This would have been the practice of the East India Company in buying cotton from India and selling the finished garment back to Indians at a price they could barely afford. The Indian textile market was traditionally a reasonable source of income for local Indian weavers and cotton-pickers, however, the import of cheaper Indian textiles into England excited the local cloth producers to such an extent that the British government imposed heavy penalty on the users of Indian fabrics in England. Thus, the English textile industry resorted to importing the raw-cotton from India, weaving the cotton by machine and then exporting it back to the millions in India, which was then under British Rule. The consequence was that the local Indian textile industry collapsed. From Gandhi's perspective "mechanization is good when the hands are too few for the work that is intended to be accomplished. It is an evil when there are more hands than are required for the work." Gandhi's answer to the mechanization of the weaving process and the exploitation of his people was the Charkha (spinning wheel). He believed that Indians lost their freedom with the loss of the Charkha. Spinning supplemented the agriculture of a village and gave it dignity, it prevented idleness and supported all anterior and posterior industries such as ginning, carding, warping, sizing, dyeing and weaving. It in turn kept the village carpenter and blacksmith busy. The Charkha enabled all the Indian villages to be self-sufficient and without it the villages were drained of their industries, creativity and little wealth. The spinning wheel became the symbol of Gandhi.
In Tibet the wheel is sacred. The universe in Buddhism is depicted in what is known as the Wheel of Life. The rim of the wheel is divided into 12 causes and effects; our passage from birth to death. The wheel is then divided into six sections representing different realms; the Gods, the Demi-gods, humans, animals, ghosts and hell. The rim of the hub of the wheel is divided into two; white being the path to bliss and black being the path to darkness or hell. The hub of the wheel represents the three poisons; delusions, hatred and greed. These are typically personified by the boar, serpent and fowl. The hub is considered the wheel of woe as it is typically represented by each of the poisons eating the other. It shows how 'sentient' beings can be trapped. Indeed, in Tibet the wheel is really only in evidence among the Chinese that now live there. The Chinese invasion has diluted Tibetan practices somewhat but in the main Tibetans maintain a very traditional life-style. There are no modes of transport other than horse-back or foot, they plough their fields with yak-drawn ploughs and they don't interact with foreign markets.
I'm sure it is mankind in general as opposed to simply Western man that instinctively goes about making life easier for himself. For sure, I spend time trying to work out how to make each day on the bike easier without capitulating my desire to experience the perfect ride. However, I'm not sure whether the mental resources used by the few to make the lives of the many easier is worthwhile. Is the consequence of this that we weaken mankind as a whole by no longer using our own natural resources? This is represented by our fondness for machines of all types such as calculators for simple arithmetic etc. What we don't use we lose and all that. Whether this leads towards the path of Bliss or the path of Darkness I do not know. All I know is that in Tibet they having a saying which is as follows: "With the wheel comes the end" ... and they are probably right.
Thanks for reading
Marco