At the age of eleven, news of his mother’s death reached the young Chagdud Tulku in retreat. Soon afterward, he declared that his mother’s assets were to be sold off and the proceeds used to construct an enormous prayer wheel containing 10 mil lion Vajrasattva mantras. It was a costly and ambitious undertaking. The paper was extremely expensive, coming all the way from China by yak, a journey of many months, and the nearest timber for construction was an arduous seven day trek from the village. Progress was slow, but two years later the work was completed and the wheel consecrated.
Rinpoche compared the reverberation of the spinning mantras inside the prayer wheel house to an actual experience of Vajrasattva’s pervasive purification: “This fulfilled my mother’s intention that all persons who came there and prayed with faith would be cleansed of the obscuring habits and poisons of the mind, and that by the blessings of Vajrasattva’s compassion and wisdom, all would come to abide in the intrinsic purity of their mind’s absolute nature.”
Chagdud Rinpoche oversaw the construction of many prayer wheels in his life. Of the 40 or more now spinning at Khadro Ling in Brazil, he said their blessings were so powerful that merely setting foot on Gonpa land ensured eventual liberation. So when the opportunity arose to undertake a project of similar scope in North America, we were delighted to follow in our teacher’s footsteps.
Almost three years later, a total of 32 prayer wheels containing some 350 billion mantras are turning 24 hours a day, year round, in two pavilions, one at Rigdzin Ling in northern California and one at Iron Knot Ranch in southern New Mexico. In September Katok Getsé Rinpoche, the retreat master at Katok Ritrö in Pharping, Nepal, graciously traveled from India to visit both centers, and with the assistance of Jigme Rinpoche and other Chagdud Gonpa lamas, consecrated the wheels over the course of several days of group practice. When the wheels finally began to turn, there were indeed reverberations of blessing, along with laughter, relief, and more than a few tears of gratitude.
The prayer wheel project was conceived in response to a prophecy by Guru Rinpoche, who brought the practice of the prayer wheel to Tibet 600 years after Nagarjuna introduced it in India. It foretold that when difficult times arose and the teachings of the Buddha were waning, negativity would be averted through heartfelt prayer to Guru Rinpoche: “Whoever puts this advice into practice will help to quell all warfare, social unrest, and disease in negative times.” Guru Rinpoche exhorted practitioners to recite the Vajra Guru mantra day and night. Because of this prophecy, the primary mantra of the prayer wheel project is the Vajra Guru, with more than 5 billion mantras printed on paper and 97 billion on microfilm.
Also, because the lives of the many great contemporary Buddhist lamas are sustained by the merit and faith of their students, one third of the paper and film is covered with the longevity mantras of Amitabha, Amitayus, and Chenrezik, with the merit dedicated to the uninterrupted appearance of great masters in our time to benefit all beings. The mantras of 11 other deities are included in the wheels. Nine of the mantras are duplicated from the mantras in the 40 prayer wheels that Chagdud Rinpoche created at Khadro Ling: those of Dorjé Drolö, Amitabha, Chenrezik, Amitayus, Vajrakilaya, Vajra sattva, Hayagriva, Kurukulle, and the LionFaced Dakini. The wheels at Rigdzin Ling and Iron Knot Ranch also include Longchenpa and Green Tara mantras, as well as the Red Tara mantra in its hand-turned wheels.
The original files of the ten mantras that Rinpoche approved for inclusion in the Brazilian prayer wheels (the nine just mentioned as well as the Vajra Guru mantra) were sent to Rigdzin Ling so that the mantras and dedication prayers in the wheels in North America would duplicate those that Rinpoche selected.
Conceived for the sole purpose of benefiting beings, this project is breathtaking in its scope. Consider the paper. Each of the hundred plus rolls of nearly translucent paper is 3 feet wide and approximately 25 miles long. That’s 2,600 miles of paper in all. According to the printing company, the print run was six times greater than any that had preceded it. The young employee who monitored the inking process said he began to see mantras in his dreams. The ink itself had been consecrated by sacred substances, some containing minute quantities of past masters’ relics. Four tractor trailer loads arrived at their respective destinations having first traversed the continent by rail. On the road to Rigdzin Ling, one trailer was briefly detained by the Highway Patrol for being too long. In New Mexico, it took some negotiation to get the semis partway down a 15mile dirt road, where each of the fifty-one 1,700 pound rolls was unloaded, reloaded onto a smaller flatbed truck, then unloaded once more, before being ferried by forklift to the hilltop jobsite. Had the yak option been available, it might have proved less of a hassle.
In addition to the mantras printed on paper, the wheels contain more than 200 miles of microfiche. To the naked eye, microfiche appears to be an opaque film, but with magnification, impossibly tiny and confoundingly numerous syllables spring to life. Because every mantra had to be perfectly legible, the staff of Padma Publishing spent untold hours proofing reel after reel of film. On top of that, the final product was delivered in relatively small canisters containing spools several hundred feet long. In order to accommodate the larger diameter of the prayer wheels, the slippery film had to be rewound using a spooling table custom built for that purpose in the Rigdzin Ling shop. The process took months and the labor of several dedicated long term retreatants who came out of retreat just for this purpose.
To house the wheels, two sizable pavilions were constructed. Extensive excavations and forms were made, and rivers of concrete were poured and finished. The road leading to Iron Knot was too treacherous for concrete trucks, so the mix was batched by hand. Pours begun midmorning sometimes lasted into the wee hours of the following day. In California, enormous cedar timbers were hauled in from the coast, and the crew was schooled in timber framing techniques. Structural members were fashioned meticulously by hand, then raised carefully into place. The huge rafters now support an elegant roof of earthen tiles imported from Japan, the installation of which was an art in itself. In New Mexico, the welding of the framework took the better part of two summers and the winter in between. In both locales, crews pushed on through sun and rain, the obligatory equipment failures, engineering headaches, and logistical quagmires. All those who participated worked beyond themselves, giving up weekends, gainful employment, teaching, and retreat time to get the job done. Our extended sangha, and old friends as well as new, rose to the occasion. Some traveled thousands of miles to lend a hand, and in so doing, made it happen. Both projects were aided time and again by reinforcements from afar, just as stamina was failing. Happily, it’s likely no one knows the full extent of what everyone else did in order to bring the projects to fruition. They simply wouldn’t have happened without the collective effort, which is a gratifying thought and par for the course for anyone accustomed to working within the mandala of Chagdud Rinpoche.
Even after we’d labored through the numerous details, the finished product still came as a big surprise. Though the various crews crafted and assembled the pieces, there is a sense that the prayer wheels themselves appeared miraculously. It is difficult to describe their effect on the mind in a way that doesn’t diminish their actuality, but if you’ve spent any time with the wheels, you know they speak quite eloquently for themselves. We can only admit that we’ve had front row seats on another act of the lama’s compassion. Our efforts—the sweat and tears, the soreness and fatigue, the weight of decision and management—were nothing other than the embrace of the Guru, the bear hug of the lineage.
Mantra is the reverberation of awareness, perfect speech unsullied by ignorance. Laden with mantras written in ink that contains the heart blood of the lineage, then set spinning by the breath of peerless lamas who themselves have gone beyond deluded mind, the prayer wheels now turning cast their blessings to the ten directions so that all beings may come to abide in the intrinsic purity of their mind’s absolute nature.
At the age of eleven, news of his mother’s death reached the young Chagdud Tulku in retreat. Soon afterward, he declared that his mother’s assets were to be sold off and the proceeds used to construct an enormous prayer wheel containing 10 mil lion Vajrasattva mantras. It was a costly and ambitious undertaking. The paper was extremely expensive, coming all the way from China by yak, a journey of many months, and the nearest timber for construction was an arduous seven day trek from the village. Progress was slow, but two years later the work was completed and the wheel consecrated.
Rinpoche compared the reverberation of the spinning mantras inside the prayer wheel house to an actual experience of Vajrasattva’s pervasive purification: “This fulfilled my mother’s intention that all persons who came there and prayed with faith would be cleansed of the obscuring habits and poisons of the mind, and that by the blessings of Vajrasattva’s compassion and wisdom, all would come to abide in the intrinsic purity of their mind’s absolute nature.”
Chagdud Rinpoche oversaw the construction of many prayer wheels in his life. Of the 40 or more now spinning at Khadro Ling in Brazil, he said their blessings were so powerful that merely setting foot on Gonpa land ensured eventual liberation. So when the opportunity arose to undertake a project of similar scope in North America, we were delighted to follow in our teacher’s footsteps.
Almost three years later, a total of 32 prayer wheels containing some 350 billion mantras are turning 24 hours a day, year round, in two pavilions, one at Rigdzin Ling in northern California and one at Iron Knot Ranch in southern New Mexico. In September Katok Getsé Rinpoche, the retreat master at Katok Ritrö in Pharping, Nepal, graciously traveled from India to visit both centers, and with the assistance of Jigme Rinpoche and other Chagdud Gonpa lamas, consecrated the wheels over the course of several days of group practice. When the wheels finally began to turn, there were indeed reverberations of blessing, along with laughter, relief, and more than a few tears of gratitude.
The prayer wheel project was conceived in response to a prophecy by Guru Rinpoche, who brought the practice of the prayer wheel to Tibet 600 years after Nagarjuna introduced it in India. It foretold that when difficult times arose and the teachings of the Buddha were waning, negativity would be averted through heartfelt prayer to Guru Rinpoche: “Whoever puts this advice into practice will help to quell all warfare, social unrest, and disease in negative times.” Guru Rinpoche exhorted practitioners to recite the Vajra Guru mantra day and night. Because of this prophecy, the primary mantra of the prayer wheel project is the Vajra Guru, with more than 5 billion mantras printed on paper and 97 billion on microfilm.
Also, because the lives of the many great contemporary Buddhist lamas are sustained by the merit and faith of their students, one third of the paper and film is covered with the longevity mantras of Amitabha, Amitayus, and Chenrezik, with the merit dedicated to the uninterrupted appearance of great masters in our time to benefit all beings. The mantras of 11 other deities are included in the wheels. Nine of the mantras are duplicated from the mantras in the 40 prayer wheels that Chagdud Rinpoche created at Khadro Ling: those of Dorjé Drolö, Amitabha, Chenrezik, Amitayus, Vajrakilaya, Vajra sattva, Hayagriva, Kurukulle, and the LionFaced Dakini. The wheels at Rigdzin Ling and Iron Knot Ranch also include Longchenpa and Green Tara mantras, as well as the Red Tara mantra in its hand-turned wheels.
The original files of the ten mantras that Rinpoche approved for inclusion in the Brazilian prayer wheels (the nine just mentioned as well as the Vajra Guru mantra) were sent to Rigdzin Ling so that the mantras and dedication prayers in the wheels in North America would duplicate those that Rinpoche selected.
Conceived for the sole purpose of benefiting beings, this project is breathtaking in its scope. Consider the paper. Each of the hundred plus rolls of nearly translucent paper is 3 feet wide and approximately 25 miles long. That’s 2,600 miles of paper in all. According to the printing company, the print run was six times greater than any that had preceded it. The young employee who monitored the inking process said he began to see mantras in his dreams. The ink itself had been consecrated by sacred substances, some containing minute quantities of past masters’ relics. Four tractor trailer loads arrived at their respective destinations having first traversed the continent by rail. On the road to Rigdzin Ling, one trailer was briefly detained by the Highway Patrol for being too long. In New Mexico, it took some negotiation to get the semis partway down a 15mile dirt road, where each of the fifty-one 1,700 pound rolls was unloaded, reloaded onto a smaller flatbed truck, then unloaded once more, before being ferried by forklift to the hilltop jobsite. Had the yak option been available, it might have proved less of a hassle.
In addition to the mantras printed on paper, the wheels contain more than 200 miles of microfiche. To the naked eye, microfiche appears to be an opaque film, but with magnification, impossibly tiny and confoundingly numerous syllables spring to life. Because every mantra had to be perfectly legible, the staff of Padma Publishing spent untold hours proofing reel after reel of film. On top of that, the final product was delivered in relatively small canisters containing spools several hundred feet long. In order to accommodate the larger diameter of the prayer wheels, the slippery film had to be rewound using a spooling table custom built for that purpose in the Rigdzin Ling shop. The process took months and the labor of several dedicated long term retreatants who came out of retreat just for this purpose.
To house the wheels, two sizable pavilions were constructed. Extensive excavations and forms were made, and rivers of concrete were poured and finished. The road leading to Iron Knot was too treacherous for concrete trucks, so the mix was batched by hand. Pours begun midmorning sometimes lasted into the wee hours of the following day. In California, enormous cedar timbers were hauled in from the coast, and the crew was schooled in timber framing techniques. Structural members were fashioned meticulously by hand, then raised carefully into place. The huge rafters now support an elegant roof of earthen tiles imported from Japan, the installation of which was an art in itself. In New Mexico, the welding of the framework took the better part of two summers and the winter in between. In both locales, crews pushed on through sun and rain, the obligatory equipment failures, engineering headaches, and logistical quagmires. All those who participated worked beyond themselves, giving up weekends, gainful employment, teaching, and retreat time to get the job done. Our extended sangha, and old friends as well as new, rose to the occasion. Some traveled thousands of miles to lend a hand, and in so doing, made it happen. Both projects were aided time and again by reinforcements from afar, just as stamina was failing. Happily, it’s likely no one knows the full extent of what everyone else did in order to bring the projects to fruition. They simply wouldn’t have happened without the collective effort, which is a gratifying thought and par for the course for anyone accustomed to working within the mandala of Chagdud Rinpoche.
Even after we’d labored through the numerous details, the finished product still came as a big surprise. Though the various crews crafted and assembled the pieces, there is a sense that the prayer wheels themselves appeared miraculously. It is difficult to describe their effect on the mind in a way that doesn’t diminish their actuality, but if you’ve spent any time with the wheels, you know they speak quite eloquently for themselves. We can only admit that we’ve had front row seats on another act of the lama’s compassion. Our efforts—the sweat and tears, the soreness and fatigue, the weight of decision and management—were nothing other than the embrace of the Guru, the bear hug of the lineage.
Mantra is the reverberation of awareness, perfect speech unsullied by ignorance. Laden with mantras written in ink that contains the heart blood of the lineage, then set spinning by the breath of peerless lamas who themselves have gone beyond deluded mind, the prayer wheels now turning cast their blessings to the ten directions so that all beings may come to abide in the intrinsic purity of their mind’s absolute nature.
At the age of eleven, news of his mother’s death reached the young Chagdud Tulku in retreat. Soon afterward, he declared that his mother’s assets were to be sold off and the proceeds used to construct an enormous prayer wheel containing 10 mil lion Vajrasattva mantras. It was a costly and ambitious undertaking. The paper was extremely expensive, coming all the way from China by yak, a journey of many months, and the nearest timber for construction was an arduous seven day trek from the village. Progress was slow, but two years later the work was completed and the wheel consecrated.
Rinpoche compared the reverberation of the spinning mantras inside the prayer wheel house to an actual experience of Vajrasattva’s pervasive purification: “This fulfilled my mother’s intention that all persons who came there and prayed with faith would be cleansed of the obscuring habits and poisons of the mind, and that by the blessings of Vajrasattva’s compassion and wisdom, all would come to abide in the intrinsic purity of their mind’s absolute nature.”
Chagdud Rinpoche oversaw the construction of many prayer wheels in his life. Of the 40 or more now spinning at Khadro Ling in Brazil, he said their blessings were so powerful that merely setting foot on Gonpa land ensured eventual liberation. So when the opportunity arose to undertake a project of similar scope in North America, we were delighted to follow in our teacher’s footsteps.
Almost three years later, a total of 32 prayer wheels containing some 350 billion mantras are turning 24 hours a day, year round, in two pavilions, one at Rigdzin Ling in northern California and one at Iron Knot Ranch in southern New Mexico. In September Katok Getsé Rinpoche, the retreat master at Katok Ritrö in Pharping, Nepal, graciously traveled from India to visit both centers, and with the assistance of Jigme Rinpoche and other Chagdud Gonpa lamas, consecrated the wheels over the course of several days of group practice. When the wheels finally began to turn, there were indeed reverberations of blessing, along with laughter, relief, and more than a few tears of gratitude.
The prayer wheel project was conceived in response to a prophecy by Guru Rinpoche, who brought the practice of the prayer wheel to Tibet 600 years after Nagarjuna introduced it in India. It foretold that when difficult times arose and the teachings of the Buddha were waning, negativity would be averted through heartfelt prayer to Guru Rinpoche: “Whoever puts this advice into practice will help to quell all warfare, social unrest, and disease in negative times.” Guru Rinpoche exhorted practitioners to recite the Vajra Guru mantra day and night. Because of this prophecy, the primary mantra of the prayer wheel project is the Vajra Guru, with more than 5 billion mantras printed on paper and 97 billion on microfilm.
Also, because the lives of the many great contemporary Buddhist lamas are sustained by the merit and faith of their students, one third of the paper and film is covered with the longevity mantras of Amitabha, Amitayus, and Chenrezik, with the merit dedicated to the uninterrupted appearance of great masters in our time to benefit all beings. The mantras of 11 other deities are included in the wheels. Nine of the mantras are duplicated from the mantras in the 40 prayer wheels that Chagdud Rinpoche created at Khadro Ling: those of Dorjé Drolö, Amitabha, Chenrezik, Amitayus, Vajrakilaya, Vajra sattva, Hayagriva, Kurukulle, and the LionFaced Dakini. The wheels at Rigdzin Ling and Iron Knot Ranch also include Longchenpa and Green Tara mantras, as well as the Red Tara mantra in its hand-turned wheels.
The original files of the ten mantras that Rinpoche approved for inclusion in the Brazilian prayer wheels (the nine just mentioned as well as the Vajra Guru mantra) were sent to Rigdzin Ling so that the mantras and dedication prayers in the wheels in North America would duplicate those that Rinpoche selected.
Conceived for the sole purpose of benefiting beings, this project is breathtaking in its scope. Consider the paper. Each of the hundred plus rolls of nearly translucent paper is 3 feet wide and approximately 25 miles long. That’s 2,600 miles of paper in all. According to the printing company, the print run was six times greater than any that had preceded it. The young employee who monitored the inking process said he began to see mantras in his dreams. The ink itself had been consecrated by sacred substances, some containing minute quantities of past masters’ relics. Four tractor trailer loads arrived at their respective destinations having first traversed the continent by rail. On the road to Rigdzin Ling, one trailer was briefly detained by the Highway Patrol for being too long. In New Mexico, it took some negotiation to get the semis partway down a 15mile dirt road, where each of the fifty-one 1,700 pound rolls was unloaded, reloaded onto a smaller flatbed truck, then unloaded once more, before being ferried by forklift to the hilltop jobsite. Had the yak option been available, it might have proved less of a hassle.
In addition to the mantras printed on paper, the wheels contain more than 200 miles of microfiche. To the naked eye, microfiche appears to be an opaque film, but with magnification, impossibly tiny and confoundingly numerous syllables spring to life. Because every mantra had to be perfectly legible, the staff of Padma Publishing spent untold hours proofing reel after reel of film. On top of that, the final product was delivered in relatively small canisters containing spools several hundred feet long. In order to accommodate the larger diameter of the prayer wheels, the slippery film had to be rewound using a spooling table custom built for that purpose in the Rigdzin Ling shop. The process took months and the labor of several dedicated long term retreatants who came out of retreat just for this purpose.
To house the wheels, two sizable pavilions were constructed. Extensive excavations and forms were made, and rivers of concrete were poured and finished. The road leading to Iron Knot was too treacherous for concrete trucks, so the mix was batched by hand. Pours begun midmorning sometimes lasted into the wee hours of the following day. In California, enormous cedar timbers were hauled in from the coast, and the crew was schooled in timber framing techniques. Structural members were fashioned meticulously by hand, then raised carefully into place. The huge rafters now support an elegant roof of earthen tiles imported from Japan, the installation of which was an art in itself. In New Mexico, the welding of the framework took the better part of two summers and the winter in between. In both locales, crews pushed on through sun and rain, the obligatory equipment failures, engineering headaches, and logistical quagmires. All those who participated worked beyond themselves, giving up weekends, gainful employment, teaching, and retreat time to get the job done. Our extended sangha, and old friends as well as new, rose to the occasion. Some traveled thousands of miles to lend a hand, and in so doing, made it happen. Both projects were aided time and again by reinforcements from afar, just as stamina was failing. Happily, it’s likely no one knows the full extent of what everyone else did in order to bring the projects to fruition. They simply wouldn’t have happened without the collective effort, which is a gratifying thought and par for the course for anyone accustomed to working within the mandala of Chagdud Rinpoche.
Even after we’d labored through the numerous details, the finished product still came as a big surprise. Though the various crews crafted and assembled the pieces, there is a sense that the prayer wheels themselves appeared miraculously. It is difficult to describe their effect on the mind in a way that doesn’t diminish their actuality, but if you’ve spent any time with the wheels, you know they speak quite eloquently for themselves. We can only admit that we’ve had front row seats on another act of the lama’s compassion. Our efforts—the sweat and tears, the soreness and fatigue, the weight of decision and management—were nothing other than the embrace of the Guru, the bear hug of the lineage.
Mantra is the reverberation of awareness, perfect speech unsullied by ignorance. Laden with mantras written in ink that contains the heart blood of the lineage, then set spinning by the breath of peerless lamas who themselves have gone beyond deluded mind, the prayer wheels now turning cast their blessings to the ten directions so that all beings may come to abide in the intrinsic purity of their mind’s absolute nature.
At the age of eleven, news of his mother’s death reached the young Chagdud Tulku in retreat. Soon afterward, he declared that his mother’s assets were to be sold off and the proceeds used to construct an enormous prayer wheel containing 10 mil lion Vajrasattva mantras. It was a costly and ambitious undertaking. The paper was extremely expensive, coming all the way from China by yak, a journey of many months, and the nearest timber for construction was an arduous seven day trek from the village. Progress was slow, but two years later the work was completed and the wheel consecrated.
Rinpoche compared the reverberation of the spinning mantras inside the prayer wheel house to an actual experience of Vajrasattva’s pervasive purification: “This fulfilled my mother’s intention that all persons who came there and prayed with faith would be cleansed of the obscuring habits and poisons of the mind, and that by the blessings of Vajrasattva’s compassion and wisdom, all would come to abide in the intrinsic purity of their mind’s absolute nature.”
Chagdud Rinpoche oversaw the construction of many prayer wheels in his life. Of the 40 or more now spinning at Khadro Ling in Brazil, he said their blessings were so powerful that merely setting foot on Gonpa land ensured eventual liberation. So when the opportunity arose to undertake a project of similar scope in North America, we were delighted to follow in our teacher’s footsteps.
Almost three years later, a total of 32 prayer wheels containing some 350 billion mantras are turning 24 hours a day, year round, in two pavilions, one at Rigdzin Ling in northern California and one at Iron Knot Ranch in southern New Mexico. In September Katok Getsé Rinpoche, the retreat master at Katok Ritrö in Pharping, Nepal, graciously traveled from India to visit both centers, and with the assistance of Jigme Rinpoche and other Chagdud Gonpa lamas, consecrated the wheels over the course of several days of group practice. When the wheels finally began to turn, there were indeed reverberations of blessing, along with laughter, relief, and more than a few tears of gratitude.
The prayer wheel project was conceived in response to a prophecy by Guru Rinpoche, who brought the practice of the prayer wheel to Tibet 600 years after Nagarjuna introduced it in India. It foretold that when difficult times arose and the teachings of the Buddha were waning, negativity would be averted through heartfelt prayer to Guru Rinpoche: “Whoever puts this advice into practice will help to quell all warfare, social unrest, and disease in negative times.” Guru Rinpoche exhorted practitioners to recite the Vajra Guru mantra day and night. Because of this prophecy, the primary mantra of the prayer wheel project is the Vajra Guru, with more than 5 billion mantras printed on paper and 97 billion on microfilm.
Also, because the lives of the many great contemporary Buddhist lamas are sustained by the merit and faith of their students, one third of the paper and film is covered with the longevity mantras of Amitabha, Amitayus, and Chenrezik, with the merit dedicated to the uninterrupted appearance of great masters in our time to benefit all beings. The mantras of 11 other deities are included in the wheels. Nine of the mantras are duplicated from the mantras in the 40 prayer wheels that Chagdud Rinpoche created at Khadro Ling: those of Dorjé Drolö, Amitabha, Chenrezik, Amitayus, Vajrakilaya, Vajra sattva, Hayagriva, Kurukulle, and the LionFaced Dakini. The wheels at Rigdzin Ling and Iron Knot Ranch also include Longchenpa and Green Tara mantras, as well as the Red Tara mantra in its hand-turned wheels.
The original files of the ten mantras that Rinpoche approved for inclusion in the Brazilian prayer wheels (the nine just mentioned as well as the Vajra Guru mantra) were sent to Rigdzin Ling so that the mantras and dedication prayers in the wheels in North America would duplicate those that Rinpoche selected.
Conceived for the sole purpose of benefiting beings, this project is breathtaking in its scope. Consider the paper. Each of the hundred plus rolls of nearly translucent paper is 3 feet wide and approximately 25 miles long. That’s 2,600 miles of paper in all. According to the printing company, the print run was six times greater than any that had preceded it. The young employee who monitored the inking process said he began to see mantras in his dreams. The ink itself had been consecrated by sacred substances, some containing minute quantities of past masters’ relics. Four tractor trailer loads arrived at their respective destinations having first traversed the continent by rail. On the road to Rigdzin Ling, one trailer was briefly detained by the Highway Patrol for being too long. In New Mexico, it took some negotiation to get the semis partway down a 15mile dirt road, where each of the fifty-one 1,700 pound rolls was unloaded, reloaded onto a smaller flatbed truck, then unloaded once more, before being ferried by forklift to the hilltop jobsite. Had the yak option been available, it might have proved less of a hassle.
In addition to the mantras printed on paper, the wheels contain more than 200 miles of microfiche. To the naked eye, microfiche appears to be an opaque film, but with magnification, impossibly tiny and confoundingly numerous syllables spring to life. Because every mantra had to be perfectly legible, the staff of Padma Publishing spent untold hours proofing reel after reel of film. On top of that, the final product was delivered in relatively small canisters containing spools several hundred feet long. In order to accommodate the larger diameter of the prayer wheels, the slippery film had to be rewound using a spooling table custom built for that purpose in the Rigdzin Ling shop. The process took months and the labor of several dedicated long term retreatants who came out of retreat just for this purpose.
To house the wheels, two sizable pavilions were constructed. Extensive excavations and forms were made, and rivers of concrete were poured and finished. The road leading to Iron Knot was too treacherous for concrete trucks, so the mix was batched by hand. Pours begun midmorning sometimes lasted into the wee hours of the following day. In California, enormous cedar timbers were hauled in from the coast, and the crew was schooled in timber framing techniques. Structural members were fashioned meticulously by hand, then raised carefully into place. The huge rafters now support an elegant roof of earthen tiles imported from Japan, the installation of which was an art in itself. In New Mexico, the welding of the framework took the better part of two summers and the winter in between. In both locales, crews pushed on through sun and rain, the obligatory equipment failures, engineering headaches, and logistical quagmires. All those who participated worked beyond themselves, giving up weekends, gainful employment, teaching, and retreat time to get the job done. Our extended sangha, and old friends as well as new, rose to the occasion. Some traveled thousands of miles to lend a hand, and in so doing, made it happen. Both projects were aided time and again by reinforcements from afar, just as stamina was failing. Happily, it’s likely no one knows the full extent of what everyone else did in order to bring the projects to fruition. They simply wouldn’t have happened without the collective effort, which is a gratifying thought and par for the course for anyone accustomed to working within the mandala of Chagdud Rinpoche.
Even after we’d labored through the numerous details, the finished product still came as a big surprise. Though the various crews crafted and assembled the pieces, there is a sense that the prayer wheels themselves appeared miraculously. It is difficult to describe their effect on the mind in a way that doesn’t diminish their actuality, but if you’ve spent any time with the wheels, you know they speak quite eloquently for themselves. We can only admit that we’ve had front row seats on another act of the lama’s compassion. Our efforts—the sweat and tears, the soreness and fatigue, the weight of decision and management—were nothing other than the embrace of the Guru, the bear hug of the lineage.
Mantra is the reverberation of awareness, perfect speech unsullied by ignorance. Laden with mantras written in ink that contains the heart blood of the lineage, then set spinning by the breath of peerless lamas who themselves have gone beyond deluded mind, the prayer wheels now turning cast their blessings to the ten directions so that all beings may come to abide in the intrinsic purity of their mind’s absolute nature.
At the age of eleven, news of his mother’s death reached the young Chagdud Tulku in retreat. Soon afterward, he declared that his mother’s assets were to be sold off and the proceeds used to construct an enormous prayer wheel containing 10 mil lion Vajrasattva mantras. It was a costly and ambitious undertaking. The paper was extremely expensive, coming all the way from China by yak, a journey of many months, and the nearest timber for construction was an arduous seven day trek from the village. Progress was slow, but two years later the work was completed and the wheel consecrated.
Rinpoche compared the reverberation of the spinning mantras inside the prayer wheel house to an actual experience of Vajrasattva’s pervasive purification: “This fulfilled my mother’s intention that all persons who came there and prayed with faith would be cleansed of the obscuring habits and poisons of the mind, and that by the blessings of Vajrasattva’s compassion and wisdom, all would come to abide in the intrinsic purity of their mind’s absolute nature.”
Chagdud Rinpoche oversaw the construction of many prayer wheels in his life. Of the 40 or more now spinning at Khadro Ling in Brazil, he said their blessings were so powerful that merely setting foot on Gonpa land ensured eventual liberation. So when the opportunity arose to undertake a project of similar scope in North America, we were delighted to follow in our teacher’s footsteps.
Almost three years later, a total of 32 prayer wheels containing some 350 billion mantras are turning 24 hours a day, year round, in two pavilions, one at Rigdzin Ling in northern California and one at Iron Knot Ranch in southern New Mexico. In September Katok Getsé Rinpoche, the retreat master at Katok Ritrö in Pharping, Nepal, graciously traveled from India to visit both centers, and with the assistance of Jigme Rinpoche and other Chagdud Gonpa lamas, consecrated the wheels over the course of several days of group practice. When the wheels finally began to turn, there were indeed reverberations of blessing, along with laughter, relief, and more than a few tears of gratitude.
The prayer wheel project was conceived in response to a prophecy by Guru Rinpoche, who brought the practice of the prayer wheel to Tibet 600 years after Nagarjuna introduced it in India. It foretold that when difficult times arose and the teachings of the Buddha were waning, negativity would be averted through heartfelt prayer to Guru Rinpoche: “Whoever puts this advice into practice will help to quell all warfare, social unrest, and disease in negative times.” Guru Rinpoche exhorted practitioners to recite the Vajra Guru mantra day and night. Because of this prophecy, the primary mantra of the prayer wheel project is the Vajra Guru, with more than 5 billion mantras printed on paper and 97 billion on microfilm.
Also, because the lives of the many great contemporary Buddhist lamas are sustained by the merit and faith of their students, one third of the paper and film is covered with the longevity mantras of Amitabha, Amitayus, and Chenrezik, with the merit dedicated to the uninterrupted appearance of great masters in our time to benefit all beings. The mantras of 11 other deities are included in the wheels. Nine of the mantras are duplicated from the mantras in the 40 prayer wheels that Chagdud Rinpoche created at Khadro Ling: those of Dorjé Drolö, Amitabha, Chenrezik, Amitayus, Vajrakilaya, Vajra sattva, Hayagriva, Kurukulle, and the LionFaced Dakini. The wheels at Rigdzin Ling and Iron Knot Ranch also include Longchenpa and Green Tara mantras, as well as the Red Tara mantra in its hand-turned wheels.
The original files of the ten mantras that Rinpoche approved for inclusion in the Brazilian prayer wheels (the nine just mentioned as well as the Vajra Guru mantra) were sent to Rigdzin Ling so that the mantras and dedication prayers in the wheels in North America would duplicate those that Rinpoche selected.
Conceived for the sole purpose of benefiting beings, this project is breathtaking in its scope. Consider the paper. Each of the hundred plus rolls of nearly translucent paper is 3 feet wide and approximately 25 miles long. That’s 2,600 miles of paper in all. According to the printing company, the print run was six times greater than any that had preceded it. The young employee who monitored the inking process said he began to see mantras in his dreams. The ink itself had been consecrated by sacred substances, some containing minute quantities of past masters’ relics. Four tractor trailer loads arrived at their respective destinations having first traversed the continent by rail. On the road to Rigdzin Ling, one trailer was briefly detained by the Highway Patrol for being too long. In New Mexico, it took some negotiation to get the semis partway down a 15mile dirt road, where each of the fifty-one 1,700 pound rolls was unloaded, reloaded onto a smaller flatbed truck, then unloaded once more, before being ferried by forklift to the hilltop jobsite. Had the yak option been available, it might have proved less of a hassle.
In addition to the mantras printed on paper, the wheels contain more than 200 miles of microfiche. To the naked eye, microfiche appears to be an opaque film, but with magnification, impossibly tiny and confoundingly numerous syllables spring to life. Because every mantra had to be perfectly legible, the staff of Padma Publishing spent untold hours proofing reel after reel of film. On top of that, the final product was delivered in relatively small canisters containing spools several hundred feet long. In order to accommodate the larger diameter of the prayer wheels, the slippery film had to be rewound using a spooling table custom built for that purpose in the Rigdzin Ling shop. The process took months and the labor of several dedicated long term retreatants who came out of retreat just for this purpose.
To house the wheels, two sizable pavilions were constructed. Extensive excavations and forms were made, and rivers of concrete were poured and finished. The road leading to Iron Knot was too treacherous for concrete trucks, so the mix was batched by hand. Pours begun midmorning sometimes lasted into the wee hours of the following day. In California, enormous cedar timbers were hauled in from the coast, and the crew was schooled in timber framing techniques. Structural members were fashioned meticulously by hand, then raised carefully into place. The huge rafters now support an elegant roof of earthen tiles imported from Japan, the installation of which was an art in itself. In New Mexico, the welding of the framework took the better part of two summers and the winter in between. In both locales, crews pushed on through sun and rain, the obligatory equipment failures, engineering headaches, and logistical quagmires. All those who participated worked beyond themselves, giving up weekends, gainful employment, teaching, and retreat time to get the job done. Our extended sangha, and old friends as well as new, rose to the occasion. Some traveled thousands of miles to lend a hand, and in so doing, made it happen. Both projects were aided time and again by reinforcements from afar, just as stamina was failing. Happily, it’s likely no one knows the full extent of what everyone else did in order to bring the projects to fruition. They simply wouldn’t have happened without the collective effort, which is a gratifying thought and par for the course for anyone accustomed to working within the mandala of Chagdud Rinpoche.
Even after we’d labored through the numerous details, the finished product still came as a big surprise. Though the various crews crafted and assembled the pieces, there is a sense that the prayer wheels themselves appeared miraculously. It is difficult to describe their effect on the mind in a way that doesn’t diminish their actuality, but if you’ve spent any time with the wheels, you know they speak quite eloquently for themselves. We can only admit that we’ve had front row seats on another act of the lama’s compassion. Our efforts—the sweat and tears, the soreness and fatigue, the weight of decision and management—were nothing other than the embrace of the Guru, the bear hug of the lineage.
Mantra is the reverberation of awareness, perfect speech unsullied by ignorance. Laden with mantras written in ink that contains the heart blood of the lineage, then set spinning by the breath of peerless lamas who themselves have gone beyond deluded mind, the prayer wheels now turning cast their blessings to the ten directions so that all beings may come to abide in the intrinsic purity of their mind’s absolute nature.
