Prayer Wheels

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your kind email and photos. I was very happy to receive them. I had the thought to build a prayer wheel in the ocean in Taiwan, where the water also eventually also connects with China, but so far it hasn’t happened.

I want to help with the finances for the prayer wheel, so I would like to make a donation. As the project progresses, if you can, keep me updated and let me know.

This prayer wheel that you are making that will help the numberless sentient beings in the water, also the human beings whom the water touches.

Please read the advice I have given and what we do in Washington to benefit the ants, the birds and all the beings in the lakes, as you will then understand all the different ways you can benefit.

Recently we went to a big lake that is connected to Canada. We put three big Namgyälma mantras in the lake, by attaching the mantra to some foam so it doesn’t sink. The mantra then floats on the lake and blesses all the beings in the lake. On the back of the mantra, we have this message, so that people don’t think it is garbage. It says:

“Please don’t think this is garbage! This is the most precious thing that makes the whole of this water holy. It purifies the negative mind which produces suffering of the fish and all others who live in or use this water, and it causes not only temporary but ultimate, everlasting and peerless happiness.”

I am sure you already know the incredible benefits of Namgyälma mantra, as I saw you put the mantra on the ceilings, but in case, you can read more here about the benefits.

This is what we did when we went out on the lake. I wanted to go into the water, because it was very clean. I wanted to wash, but there was no sun and I thought the water would be very cold. I wanted to wash there because I have never washed my body in the lake or ocean before. So there was a reason. I did walk into the water and I washed both my legs, but the water didn’t wash my whole body completely. Anyway, the water was not very cold.

The reason I wanted to wash there is that I try to recite the longest Chenrezig mantra, as well as the middle-length and short Chenrezig Mantra, OM MANI PADME HUM. I recite this two thousand times a day. I gave this commitment to myself; His Holiness the Dalai Lama gave the commitment to recite it one thousand times a day.

After you recite this mantra, it has unbelievable benefits. If you wash in the water or lake, then any being that the water touches, it purifies all the heavy negative karma of all those beings. Not only that, it stops their rebirth from womb, egg and heat, so that means it helps them to get reborn in pure land. Then from life to life until they achieve enlightenment and they are around buddhas and bodhisattvas. So, reciting this mantra has unbelievable benefits for sentient beings.

So in that lake I washed my legs, but I only have two legs. We had food on the grass, a picnic, so it was a very nice time, a meaningful time. Next time we go there I want to do chöd practice with everyone together. It is so good and meaningful.

I really want you to read all the different ways that we try to benefit the animals here in Washington. [Read more and find links here.]

I want to express so many thanks—billion, zillions of thanks—for how you are helping others and the beautiful animals.

So far we have put large Namgyälma mantras, floating on the ocean on foam, in two or three different oceans around the world. This is unbelievable, as it blesses and purifies the beings in the ocean, so they are not reborn in the lower realms and they receive a higher rebirth, and it might help them to meet the Dharma.

Please keep in touch regarding how the prayer wheel is progressing, the plans. I definitely want to help with some finances.

I wanted to make a prayer wheel in the water in Taiwan, in the same water that goes to China. The prayer wheel would be half in the ocean and half above, so it would be turned by electricity and people could go around it, so a bridge would go around the prayer wheel. But it hasn’t happened yet.

In Tahiti they are building a prayer wheel, but I don’t know how it’s going. They have built a grass house for a prayer wheel.

In Solu Khumbu, I helped to build some prayer wheels, which are turned by the water. They brought the water through a hollow tree, so it goes down and in this way the prayer wheel gets turned. The water passes through the prayer wheel and then it purifies the negative karma of numberless animals and people—those who use the water, who drink it and go in the water. The negative karma of numberless sentient beings is purified and they get a higher rebirth and so forth, so there are unbelievable benefits. This is what we helped with in Solu Khumbu, Nepal. [Read more here and here.]

Thank you very much for your email and information. It made me very happy.

Please remember what makes your life most meaningful is meditation on the lamrim, and to live your life with bodhicitta motivation. This is the best.

With much love and prayers ...

When you turn the prayer wheel, please use the request to Chenrezig, from the nyung nä practice. The prayer starts with:

PHAG PA CHÄN RÄ ZIG WANG THUG JEI TER
O Arya Avalokiteshvara, treasure of compassion
KHOR DANG CHÄ PA DAG LA GONG SU SÖL
Together with your retinue, please pay attention to me….¹

Then there is a prayer that says: “May I be like you, Chenrezig.” If you can’t find the prayer you can ask someone who is familiar with nyung näs. When you recite this verse, relate it to your guru.

In all lifetimes, to benefit other sentient beings,
May I and all other sentient beings
Become only like you, Guru Chenrezig,
And like your retinue, your life span, your pure realm and your holy name.²

After turning the prayer wheel, at the end recite this prayer to Chenrezig and then the verse to be like Chenrezig, “May I be like your holy body.” It is the same verse I recite when I offer a khatag to a statue, so do like that.

Then dedicate:

Due to all the past, present, and future merits collected by me and all the merits of the three times collected by numberless buddhas and numberless sentient beings, may bodhicitta, the source of all happiness and success for all sentient beings, be generated in the hearts of all the sentient beings of the six realms, and especially in the hearts of everybody in this world, including all the students, center benefactors, and volunteers in the FPMT organization. May it be generated in the hearts of all those who rely upon me, all those for whom I have promised to pray, and all those whose names have been given to me. May it be generated in my heart and in the hearts of all my family members, those who are living and those who have died. May the bodhicitta that has already been generated increase.

You can also specifically include to all your family members, those who are dead and also those who are alive. Then do the rest of the dedication prayers that I normally do.

Notes

¹ See pp. 108–9, Nyung Nä Ritual Sadhana, FPMT, 2015.

² See p. 254, Abiding in the Retreat, LYWA, 2017.

My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling one,

Thank you very, very much for your kind letter, I enjoyed reading it. Since you are a very sincere person, you are doing all those practices and it’s very, very important that you picked up what my advice is, the essence—you got it, so that shows you are very intelligent also.

Yes, it’s possible to take refuge and the eight Mahayana vows via my recording.

Here is my brief advice, on top of what you are already doing. I am very happy with all the practices you have been doing, A very important one is Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. This is very, very important. That is the shortest one and the longest one is Lama Chöpa (Guru Puja) so that is very important practice, as my gurus said. There are nine benefits of doing Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga—you have probably read about these benefits.

It is so good that you have a 100 million mantra prayer wheel. You are so, so lucky, so fortunate. With your left hand you can count mani mantras and with your right hand you can use the prayer wheel at the same time. This is what I try to do.

One of the photos I am sending you is Chenrezig. You can look at this photo as you recite mani mantras and turn the prayer wheel. Visualize light coming from Chenrezig and from the prayer wheel to you and purifying you. Recite one mala of OM MANI PADME HUM and visualize half a mala purifying you of disease, spirit harm, negative karma and obscurations collected since beginningless rebirth. After that, if you have received Chenrezig great initiation you can think that you become Chenrezig. If you have not received the initiation then you are not able to become Chenrezig, but think you receive all the qualities. Visualize beams emitting from Chenrezig, from the prayer wheel to the six-realm sentient beings—the numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts, numberless animals, numberless humans, numberless suras, numberless asuras and numberless intermediate state beings. Think that all their negative karma and defilements collected from beginningless rebirths are immediately purified.

Please continue your life as much as possible with bodhicitta, the thought of benefiting others. As you mentioned in your letter, that is another most important thing, where all the inner happiness comes from, and your actions of body, speech and mind become the cause of enlightenment as much as possible.

I am suggesting these preliminary practices because Lama Tsongkhapa asked Manjushri, “What is the quickest way to achieve enlightenment?” Manjushri said, “First purify obstacles and [collect] extensive merits, then one-pointedly pray to the guru. Next, the actual body of practice is training the mind in the lamrim, the graduated path to enlightenment.” This is how Manjushri answered, so without practicing purification and collecting merits, lamrim realizations cannot happen, the mind cannot change, so for that we need to do preliminary practices.

Start the day off with the daily meditation, which includes the mantras for blessing the speech and the direct meditation on the path to enlightenment. [See The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment.)]

• Samaya Vajra: Do the very short practice 500,000 times
• Dorje Khadro (burning offering): 30,000
• Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga: 400,000 if you can; if not then do 300,000 or 200,000.
• Four immeasurable thoughts: 400,000. Do this with mindfulness while you are reciting the prayer. If you can’t do 400,000 then do whatever you can, but do it mindfully.
• Tsa tsas: 40,000, divided between Lama Tsongkhapa and the saviors of three types [Tib: rik sum gönpo]. These three are Manjrushri, Chenrezig and Vajrapani on one mold. 

The most important thing in your life, what makes your life most beneficial for everyone—every fish, even those that you can’t see with the eye but only with a machine, every ant, every tiny insect, every fly, every mosquito—is to actualize lamrim realizations, so what the text says goes into your heart and your heart becomes what the texts says; your heart becomes what the Buddha said.

You need to practice effortful lamrim meditation and continue until you have stable realizations. Then do effortless meditation on the lamrim.

Your main deities are Cittamani Tara and Kalachakra—both came out. Maybe you can do Cittamani Tara in the future and if possible, take Kalachakra initiation, especially from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In order to take Cittamani Tara initiation, you need another great initiation first, because Cittamani Tara has a body initiation, so you need a Highest Yoga Tantra initiation, any great initiation.

This is for your quickest enlightenment, in order to free sentient beings from the oceans of samsaric sufferings and bring them to full enlightenment. In order to achieve enlightenment in the quickest way we need the foundation to achieve realizations. We need the foundation in renunciation, bodhicitta and emptiness, and for that we need guru devotion, which is the real root of path to enlightenment.

With love and prayers ...

Ven. Roger: What is most critical to Rinpoche is making the holy objects meaningful for others so they get the full benefit of their real reason for existing according to the Buddha’s teachings. From your explanation in a previous email, after Rinpoche went to some lengths to explain the importance of having the holy objects filled correctly with the proper mantras and substances, you seemed to indicate you would merely put back the damaged or incomplete things that were already in the prayer wheels and holy objects. Rinpoche mentioned the importance of Buddhism and its purity, and dictated the advice below, which emphasizes the importance of correctly filling holy objects.

Rinpoche: Buddha said we should not put an incomplete text inside a holy object. Hinduism has deep meditation, more than Christianity. We can achieve up to the formless realm, the tip of samsara, through meditation and by following the inner pleasure derived from meditation. Eventually by wanting more and more pleasure we reach the formless realm, the limitless sky, then limitless consciousness, then nothingness and then the tip of samsara.

This is the way Hinduism develops to the peak experience, the tip of samsara, but at that point we never get aversion to that, so we stay in samsara. This is the fourth level of the formless realm, to which attraction simply doesn’t get stopped. When the karma for that experience finishes, we are reborn in the lower realms, as a human or in an even lower realm.

We have been through this process numberless times, even achieving one-pointed concentration. The conclusion is that the Hindu religion doesn’t have renunciation, bodhicitta and emptiness, the three principal aspects of the path, which are the proper and correct basis for practicing tantra. Without these our practice of tantra is not correct and we are like a bird with only one wing.

With these three, we can practice tantra correctly, which is exalted, pure appearance and pure thought. In tantra this is the basis, purifying ordinary view and conception and developing pure primordial wind and mind that continues to enlightenment.

So we cannot fill up the stupa, prayer wheel or statue with texts that have missing pages. This is the same for all four sects of Tibetan Buddhism; this is the basic knowledge.

We need to be careful of the idea that is similar to the Western way of thinking and is not Buddhist. For Westerners, human kaka a thousand years old becomes very precious and can even go in a museum. That is a Western idea not a Buddhist idea.

There is a story in Kham about an American who sponsored paintings. He wanted to take the very old paintings and carefully restore them, but the monks in the monastery simply wanted to have new paintings done, which would create incredible merit. According to the Western style old things are very important, but that’s not thinking about the merit and purification of creating a new holy object. So the monks wanted new paintings. Of course, if the painting is done by an artist who is a great holy being then it would be different.

My point is that putting old, worn out mantras or texts with missing pages inside the holy objects is not right. Old texts that cannot be used can go in a small square house or in a cave. This is what we do in Rolwaling.

I just wanted you to understand that it’s best not to put incomplete texts or old texts that are deteriorated in holy objects. This is very important, and this is respecting the objects of our refuge practice.

It is very important to follow the Three Rare Sublime Ones, who guide us to liberation and help us to be free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings. They bring us to enlightenment, so we need to show respect. So it is important to still respect those texts that are old or have missing pages and put them in a higher place. The ancient Kadampa geshes in Tibet would pick up any small part of texts etc., and place it on their head immediately out of respect. Also you cannot step over a text or use it as a seat.

My teacher, Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, for example, was very careful to always have great respect for even small parts of the robes of a monk and nun, remembering their qualities and how many precepts they keep. He then put those objects in a higher place out of respect. This is how the Sangha and lay people in Rolwaling practice. It is great. Regarding the texts that go in the holy objects, it is very important to get clear texts or mantras, etc. You can get these in Delhi or Kathmandu.

Also, for those large prayer wheels that are not just relying on paper texts, you can use microfiche and in this way you can fit billions of mantras inside the holy objects. This becomes an excellent way to create merit and achieve full enlightenment.

Here in the US we have a number of large prayer wheels and in fact in many of our centers around the world we also put microfiche inside the prayer wheels, so then many more mantras and prayers can fit into the prayer wheels or holy objects. One large prayer wheel we have in California has more than 65 billion mantras on microfiche.

The purpose of all this is to be free quickly from the oceans of samsaric sufferings, by doing it in the correct way.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you for your emails, I have read them. Thank you very much for the video of the prayer wheel; I’m sorry if I took some time to reply. I am very happy the prayer wheel is now actualized.

The paintings are different from normal prayer wheels, but it’s good if people like it. The main thing is that inside the prayer wheel there is OM MANI PADME HUM, then it is so worthwhile, because it blesses the whole area and the insects that are there. Those insects that die near the prayer wheel don’t get reborn in the lower realms and also the prayer wheel brings many blessings of Compassion Buddha to the area.

My own experience is that Chenrezig Institute in the beginning didn’t have a prayer wheel, then Geshe Lama Konchog made a small prayer wheel. I didn’t realize it immediately, but it was due to the prayer wheel that the land and area became so quiet and peaceful. The feeling was so peaceful and calm. Later I realized this was due to the prayer wheel. In the beginning I thought it was due to Geshe Lama Konchog’s bodhicitta. I thought that was why the area became so peaceful, then later I realized it was due to the prayer wheel.

Also in Brazil I saw a mother who worked on a prayer wheel in USA. She worked for one year on a prayer wheel at a center but she never even saw the Lama, so she worked on the prayer wheel. Later, one student of the center made a book about prayer wheels. I saw that after the prayer wheel was made the whole place became completely blessed, it became very peaceful. The mother also said she had the same feeling and had noticed that.

So it is great. Thank you very much, a billion, zillion times.

For any person who circumambulates and turns the prayer wheel, it becomes unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable purification. It purifies obscurations and negative karma collected from beginningless rebirths and also they collect unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable merit.

I don’t know how many mantras are inside the prayer wheel. If there are 100 million, then if you turn it around one time it is like that many years’ retreat. It’s as if you have recited 100 million OM MANI PADME HUM mantras; you get all those merits. It’s unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, and it makes it so easy to achieve enlightenment.

Thank you very much your effort for many years to benefit all the sentient beings. Even the insects that go around the prayer wheel create the cause of enlightenment; even the children who turn the prayer wheel [collect unbelievable merit.]

Please continue to make your life most meaningful with the thought of bodhicitta in every action that you do.

With much love and prayers...