Land of Medicine Buddha is home to three big prayer wheels! They are filled with billions of mantras, mostly OM MANI PADME HUM, the mantra of great compassion. According to Lama Zopa Rinpoche, simply the presence of a prayer wheel creates peace and harmony in the area.

“Simply touching a prayer wheel brings great purification of negative karma. Turning a prayer wheel containing 100 million OM MANI PADME HUM mantras accumulates the same merit as reciting that many mantras. Anyone with a disease such as AIDS or cancer can use the prayer wheel for healing. For example, sick people could come to centers with prayer wheels for several hours every day to turn the wheel and do [healing] visualizations.”

—Lama Zopa Rinpoche

By Treetops

Contains over 170 billion mantras, including OM MANI PADME HUM, as well as many sets of texts. Built in 2000. Consecration.

In our front yard

Contains 64 billion OM MANI PADME HUM mantras. Built in 1996.

At Ksitigarbha Pure Land

Our first prayer wheel!
Contains 11.8 billion OM MANI PADME HUM mantras. Built in 1994.

Regarding the source and power of prayer wheels, Lama Zopa Rinpoche said: “… I found a text that had belonged to the Lawudo Lama, who is said to be my past life incarnation and whose name was Kunzang Yeshe. Most of the texts left in the Lawudo Lama’s very humid cave were handwritten, so I had to dry them out on the roof for a while. While doing this, I noticed one old scripture called Mani Kabum (The 100,000 Teachings on Mani). There were two or three lines talking about the lineage of prayer wheels. Nagarjuna received it from the land of the nagas, who had originally received it from Chenrezig. Nagarjuna passed the lineage on to Lion-Face Dakini; she passed it to Padmasambhava, and he then brought it to Tibet. These references gave me faith.

“Then the text explained the visualization of how different colored beams of light emanate from the mantra OM MANI PADME HUM throughout the six realms of samsara, purifying sentient beings of the five types of delusion and generating the five types of wisdom in their minds. This, too, gave me faith in prayer wheel practice.”

The information on prayer wheels on this page is taken from the FPMT website.

I would like to emphasize that every prayer wheel can be used by sick people for healing. This practice is very practical and very meaningful. A prayer wheel makes the place very holy and precious, like a pure land.

Visualizations to do while turning the wheel or turning and circumambulating at the same time:

Visualize light beams coming from the mantras in the prayer wheel, illuminating you and purifying you of all your disease and the causes of disease, your negative thoughts and the imprints of these left on your mental continuum.

Then visualize the light illuminating all sentient beings and purifying all their sufferings, as well as their negative karmas and obscurations.

Or you can visualize that beams are emitted from the mantras and, like a vacuum sucking up dust, they hook all the disease and spirit harms and, most importantly, the cause of disease, which is negative karmas and obscurations. All these are absorbed or sucked into the prayer wheel. While reciting five or ten malas of the mantra, visualize purifying yourself in this way.

At the end, recite some mantra while visualizing that the beams emitted from the prayer wheel purify all the sufferings and obscurations of the sentient beings of the six realms. These absorb into the prayer wheel; and all sentient beings, including you, are then liberated, actualizing the whole path and becoming the Compassion Buddha.

Excerpted from a teaching given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Land of Medicine Buddha, June 1994.

“I saw that after the prayer wheel was made, the whole place became completely blessed; it became very peaceful. Why? Because you receive blessings from the heart of the Compassionate Buddha. Because of that, one is able to develop compassion more quickly for sentient beings and help sentient beings to reach enlightenment more quickly.”

–Lama Zopa Rinpoche

“Building 100,000 prayer wheels around the world is one of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Vast Visions for FPMT. Lama Zopa Rinpoche: “Prayer wheels are a great blessing for each country.”