Ignorance - An old blind person groping for his way with a cane
Karmic formations - A potter shaping a vase on a wheel The pots the potter makes symbolise the actions of body, speech and mind with which he moulds his karma in the wheel of life. Karmic imprints or traces from actions in previous lives affect our present and future lives in the form of certain propensities, just as the potter’s wheel keeps turning after a single push.
Consciousness - A monkey swinging from a tree The monkey represents our consciousness, the way we tend to spring from one thought to another in an uncontrolled manner.
Name and form - A person (or people) on a boat. The five skandhas that make up our sense of ‘self’ need a physical body: form (the boat) and a psyche: name (the mental skandhas: feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness).
Six sense organs - A house with five windows and a door. This symbolises the six senses by which the outer world is perceived. In the wheel of life they are represented by an empty house because this is a time when the organs of the embryo are developing but not yet functioning.
Contact - A couple embracing
Sensation - A person with an arrow in their eye
Craving - A woman offering a drink to a man
Grasping - A man plucking fruit from a tree
Becoming - A beautiful bride (sometimes depicted as a couple making love or a pregnant woman)
Birth - A woman giving birth
Old age and death - Bearers with a corpse