a very special prayer wheel for Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche

once in a while something amazing happens.. something that can not be explained by my logic or my common sense... i am always amazed when such things happens... what amazing karma!
i must say that truly, i have no way to explain such happenings other than very good karma from past lives.. no other way to explain it :)

a close and good friend was about to go to Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche's Odiyan center for a 6 months stay and practice. a few months before he was planning to go he asked us to craft a very special prayer wheel that was to be offered to Rinpoche. of course we were so honored and humbled that such a request has arrived at our door step! holy moly....
but, we felt confident that we can produce such a prayer wheel and hoped that Rinpoche (who is a master prayer wheel maker and an advocate of prayer wheels) would like it...
so we set up to craft it. our friends request was of Ayelet to do her magic with the pyrography pen and to create the art on the prayer wheel using drawings from Rinpoche's many books. and so she did not sleep for a few days but made it! her gifted hands made this masterpiece come to life :)
inside, our fried requested the prayer wheel to have: the Mani mantra, the Vajra Guru mantra, the 7-line prayer and the Vajrasattva mantra, the Lord's prayer from the Christian faith, the Shir Lamaalot from the Jewish faith, the Surat El Fatiha from the Muslim faith, a special blessing poem from the Jewish faith and the Lakota people prayer knots for world peace. wow! what a compassion bomb! amazing....
we did as requested and the prayer wheel was made and ready for the picking up and traveling :)
came our stunning!!!
our friend left and traveled to the Odiyan center.
after about a week or so he sent us a most overwhelming message. the prayer wheel was offered to Rinpoche and he loved it! he was so happy that such a prayer wheel has been constructed for world peace and in Israel! what joy!
what an honor.... thank you dear brother for giving us this opportunity to be a part of something so amazing! we are in your debt :)

here are some photos of it and a short clip of it spinning (in my hand)

Life of a prayer wheel maker in 2019…

I am often asked: "can you make a living from crafting prayer wheels?"

The answer is a bit complex, but in the big picture, yes. You can make a living from crafting prayer wheels.

As I break down this YES answer into little answers, you can understand what I meant by complex answer…

We live our lives each day doing something for money and we call that thing "work". We work for money… sometimes for someone else being a hired hand, and sometimes for ourselves, being a "business owners"… but all the same, we all work for money so we can live our lives… this is pretty simple and easy to understand.

I have done SOOOOOOOO many different jobs in my life… so many, that if I try to make a list, it will be too long… very interesting, but long!

Taking into consideration why we get paid for what we do, we start to understand how it all works… we do something for someone and they value our doing it by giving us money… that is how they show their appreciation for what it is we did for them… thus, getting paid… simple 😊

So, over the years I got paid different amounts by the value I gave back to society… my last "day job" was an agriculture farm manager. This required most of my time and mind space and there was little to no time for anything else… I needed to grow the best crops, fight to get paid good money for them in the market and make sure I do not spend more money than I made… boss like style  😊

After a few years of doing this I had an epiphany! Time is running out! 

My older brother got sick, a good friend of mine died of cancer and another good friend got the news of cancer… that got me thinking… life is ending. Time is running out… what do I want to do in the time I have left? Do I want to be a farmer? Do I want to be a factory production manager? Do I want to work for someone else? Or do I want to do something I believe in and find to be right livelihood?   Like a prayer wheel maker…?

The answer is clear: a prayer wheel maker.

But, as time moves on forward since that choice has been made and I have quit all my "day time" jobs, it is a continues straggle to make money to live... Israel is an expansive country to live in and expanses are high... material cost is very high and the most expansive thing we have in our studio is our time… if we take the cost of our lives and spread it over a month we find out how much money we must earn per hour…

We do what we believe in. making prayer wheels. But we rely on the kindness of strangers and if they like what we do…

We want to craft prayer wheels as long as we can so we can spread love and kindness to all beings in all realms, but that will only work if our artwork will be sold…

So, we hope for the best!

We want to thank you all for your support, through your kindness we can do what we love and what we find to be the best livelihood 

may it all work out and we can continue to craft prayer wheels! (but if not, there is always a 9 to 17 job out there)

lots of love,

Micha & Ayelet