By ANGELA GREGORY
The Dorje Chang Institute in Avondale is aiming to become a powerhouse of Buddhist spiritual peace and goodwill by having the world’s most powerful prayer wheel.
New Zealand Buddhists are using microfilm technology to replace traditional parchment, and are recording billions of mantras in the four tonne-plus prayer wheel at the Tibetan Buddhist centre in Avondale.
The institute modernised an ancient procedure, scanning a single mantra written by the Dalai Lama on his 1996 New Zealand tour, reducing it in size, and duplicating it billions of times on to film.
The first layer of microfilm, containing 18 billion mantras, is in the wheel, which is 2.5m tall and 1.4m wide.
The Buddhists’ aim is for the wheel to hold 2500 billion mantras to help bring world peace.
When filled it would contain 3100km of film encased with decorative and embossed gold panels handcrafted in Nepal.
The institute’s development manager, Murray Wright, said the prayer wheel would benefit even people who did not believe in Buddhism, as it took take away mental obstacles and created positive energy in anybody around it.
Mr Murray said that when people first got involved in Buddhism – as he did from a civil engineering background 20 years ago – they mainly related to the religious teachings.
Now his mind had further shifted, he had more respect for the power of prayer wheels.
The project started when spiritual director Lama Zopa Rinpoche, from California, donated the prayer wheel to the institute which decided to pack as much praying power into it as possible.
The process was not cheap, so the institute began fundraising by selling desktop versions of the prayer wheel made locally of embossed copper and rimu.
Sixty have been sold, many to overseas buyers including a Hong Kong resident who paid US$5000 for one used by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. The Dalai Lama also has one.
Prayer wheels
* Traditional Tibetan prayer wheels contain scrolls of paper on which the mantra of compassion, “Om mani padme hum”, is printed thousands of times.
* Spinning a prayer wheel is believed to have the same effect as reading the mantras contained in it, so the more mantras it holds, the more powerful is its effect.
* Tibetan Buddhists believe that reading or saying this mantra, or turning the prayer wheel, invokes the spiritual power and blessings for healing, purification, spiritual growth and peace.
* The largest traditional prayer wheels in Tibet and Mongolia contain about 10 million mantras; the New Zealand wheel, loaded with microfilm, will eventually contain 2500 billion.
