NEPAL 040112 Shopping in Patan: A Prayer Wheel for Claire

Dear Friends, 

My writing group teacher, Claire Braz-Valentine, asked that, in lieu of tuition while I was absent raveling in Nepal, that I find a prayer wheel for her.  This is an account of that shopping trip.

My introduction to prayer wheels was at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California.  There the wooden prayer wheel is at the gate to the retreat area.  It’s a cylinder about two feet high and a bit over one foot in diameter with eight handles at the bottom of the wheel, one for each of the steps in the noble eightfold path.  Prayers left at the nearby Spirit Rock gratitude hut are placed inside the wheel and the prayers are sent out into the universe each time the wheel is spun by grabbing the handle next to your "favorite" step :-) and giving the wheel a friendly whirl.

On our first evening in Nepal this March, I first saw another sort of prayer wheel as Dick and I joined dozens of Tibetan Buddhist devotees walking clockwise around the Great Stupa at Bodhnath.  Many of the worshipers were spinning prayer wheels.  Some held their small prayer wheels mounted on handles in one hand and spun them clockwise as they walked.  Others reached into the niches adorned with the red curtains -- seen below -- to spin the prayer wheels there as they walked past.Nearby prayer wheels in a room attached to the Bodhnath stupa were twelve feet high and eight feet in diameter – big enough to hold the whole world’s prayers for peace and terrifically hard to spin alone (not that one is often alone in this sacred place!).

The Great Stupa at Bodhnath showing its rectangular prayer wheel niches sheltered by red curtains and devotees circumnavigating the stupa at street level, perhaps spinning  the prayer wheels as they walked.

  This second image shows a group of prayer wheels mounted in the "open air" near the stupa at Swayambhunath.  You can see the handles on the bottoms that are pushed to turn the wheels and the mantra inscriptions on the sides of the wheels.  

Prayer wheels mounted in the "open air" near the stupa at Swayambhunath

 Whether spinning their own small prayer wheels or giving a turn to the wheels in the stupa walls, the worshipers chant the mantra of the Bodhisattva of Compassion: OM MA NE PADME HUM (ohm mah nee pahd may hum).  This mantra is often inscribed onto prayer wheels in either Tibetan script or in Rajana, a script of ancient India as shown below and on the pictured prayer wheels as well as Claire’s.

 As to the meaning of the mantra OM MA NE PADME HUM, there are many different interpretations ranging from the idea that it has no meaning in the sense of a translation and that the sounds themselves have an inherent value to the opposite idea that there are very specific – and different depending on who you consult -- meanings for each of the six syllables.

I discovered Claire’s prayer wheel in the city of Patan, near Kathmandu, in the shop of a man who uses bowls made from a special metal alloy to set up healing vibrations in the body.  As I was watching him strike a bowl held to my friend Donna Barnett’s ailing stomach -- she was suffering a bit of Nepali “turista” -- I noticed a simple, small tabletop prayer wheel on a shelf. “Yes, it is for sale,” said the healer/shop keeper.  With only a little bargaining for the sake of politeness, I bought the wheel with the thought that a prayer wheel from a healer’s shop had to be imbued with special energies . . . and Donna bought the bowl. The prayer wheel rests on the table that we sit around in Claire's dining room to read and receive our fellow writer's comments.

Namaste, Marian