The object
The Tibetan Prayer Wheel House offers the
museum visitor a tangible experience of a common feature of Tibetan
culture. The turning of prayer wheels is a practice for developing
compassion, central to Tibetan Buddhism. The Prayer Wheel
House was traditionally manufactured in the Kagyu Samye Ling
Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in southern Scotland.
Above: Click on the image to see an enlarged version of the
Prayer Wheel House.
Who made the Prayer Wheel House?
The making of Tibetan prayer wheels is a sacred process. The
National Museum of Scotland therefore commissioned the Kagyu Samye
Ling Tibetan Buddhist Monastery with making the Prayer Wheel
House.
Established in 1967 on the banks of the River Esk, Kagyu Samye
Ling was the first Tibetan Buddhist Centre founded in Europe. Many
of the Buddhists connected to Samye Ling are skilled in
aspects of Tibetan traditional craftsmanship.
Over a six month period in 2009, these craftsmen constructed the
Prayer Wheel House and its beautifully coloured resin reliefs and
ornamentation. The prayer wheels themselves were fashioned in
Nepal.
Below: Watch a slideshow of the production
process.
Layered acrylic paints
Painting the petals
Decorating the roof
Makara for the roof edge
Lotus design on prayer wheels
Moulding attached to the roof
Painting the wooden structure
Buddhist mantra 'om mani padme hum' on the cylinders
Planning the Prayer Wheel House
Over the course of 2008, a series of meetings between the museum
and the monastery had taken place to discuss the design,
ornamentation, and materials to be used, as well as the size and
number of the prayer wheels. During the design phase, designer and
Buddhist, Yeshe Palmo, worked together with Mark Bradley, one of
the Buddhist craftsman at Kagyu Samye Ling, who drew several
sketches of proposed prayer wheel designs before one was finally
agreed on with the museum.
Click on the image below to see some of the draft designs.
What is inside the prayer wheels?
Inside each prayer wheel cylinder is a tightly
wound roll of printed mantras. Mantras are short Buddhist
invocations of several syllables. Each of the 1,400 paper sheets
within each cylinder is printed with about 23,000 of these mantras.
This means that each cylinder contains 32,000,000 printed
mantras!
In order to be effective, the consecration of
the mantra sheets required a blessing. Yeshe Palmo and Mark
Bradley - Tibetan Buddhists from Kagyu Samye Ling - sprinkled
saffron water and consecration substance on every sheet of the
mantras. The consecrated sheets were then wrapped tightly around
the central axis of the cylinders, before being inserted into the
cylinders. Finally the cylinders were sealed and another Buddhist,
Akong Rinpoche, blessed the prayer wheels.
Above: Wrapping the sheets around the axis and pulling a cover
over the roll.
What do prayer wheels mean to Tibetan Buddhists?
Unique to Tibetan Buddhism, prayer wheels of
all sizes are used throughout the Tibetan cultural world by
individuals of every social rank and status. The turning of the
wheels activates the blessing of the mantras within, creating good
karma and removing obstacles to enlightenment for the benefit of
all beings. Each clockwise revolution releases the mantras and is
equivalent to reciting the same number of mantras within the prayer
wheel.
Above: Tibetan hand prayer wheel rotating on
wooden handle. You can view
this object in our online collections here.