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The Wheels of Prayer

by Arjuna
CAN one step up the pace of prayer?
Yes, If you arc in a Tibetan colony In the hills of Mussoorfc tn the Northern State of Uttar Pradesh or In the cold snowbound districts of Ladakh In the State of Jammu and Kashmir.
Tourists who visit Ladakh are struck by the colourful prayer wheels, although they are not as common as they were many years ago. Most Ladakhi* then could be seen turning a prayer wheel even while walking on the road or bargaining In the bazar.
Prayer wheels can be seen all over the entire area dominated by the lama Meet of-Buddhism In the Himalayas from Ladakh tn the west (o Bhutan 1n the east and 1n Tibet.
The wheels come tn various sizes Small wheels can be carried everywhere and the larger ones come tn big sizes fixed on stands. Passers-by can rotate the wheels.
Buddhist priests say the prayer wheel, called Mani Chaos-Kho, Is an Ingenious device to multiply prayers It seems no other monk, Protestant or Catholic, ever thought of it. Hindu temples have . no place for prayer wheels. On the other hand, they have prayer beads as the Arabs have. In some countries, they are known as worry beads Christians call them rosaries.
But In the Himalayas, a one-foot or larger cylinder contain Ing rolls of written prayer and charms, docs all the praying, revolving round a shaft carried tn hand or secured in a wall.
The prayer wheels im-Sressed the Imagination of Western scholars so much so that they seriously thought of adopting it themselves
This device Is so Ingenious as to Induce a hope that It might be adopted In Roman
Catholic countries where the time now spent In telling beads and reeling paternosters and Ave Marlas might be more profitably employed In worldly matters, while the beads were told and prayers were repeated by machinery," wrote Alexander Cunningham, known as the father of Indian archac-ology.
The earliest mention of prayer wheels Is by the Chinese pilgrim Fa H1cn in 400 AD who says it in the hands of the Ladakhi lamas. Though its origin cannot be traced with c.ertalnty, one's Imagination may wander two-and-a-half mlllcnla back when Buddha preached his first great sermon in the deer park
near Varanasi and set in motion the wheel of low which then came to be represented on numerous Buddhist monuments.
To the non-believer, a prayer wheel seems to turn on the whims of the wind or the force of the waterfall. "But to those devoted to meditation and the cultivation of a higher life, the mere sound of running water, the rustle of the leaves as the wind plays through them, the movement of the clouds in the skies and the manifold life and activity of the creatures of the jungle, are so many hymns of praise to the great harmonious low enunciated by the life of Buddha." writes J. Griffiths In AJanla.
- Depthnews Asia.