Saturday, November 14, 2009

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

tibetan prayer wheel project: how it all started

Well, it all started when I saw Garchen Rinpoche when he came to give a seminar in Israel. Rinpoche had an amazingly beautiful wooden handheld prayer wheel in his hand, and he never stopped turning it…

Later, I met Martin Dobesh, and he started to tell me about a project that he wishes to do, it was a big project concerning the construction of a big stationary prayer wheel. Martin asked me to help him with the technical aspects of the project, and from there, things started rolling….My older brother, Lior, started to tell me about the benefits of constructing prayer wheels, and suggested that I put my hands on the book: "Great Wheel of Compassion", which, lucky enough for me was one of my mom's books… I immediately sat down and started to read. By the time I was done reading, my heart was jumping with joy! What an amazing idea it is to construct these wheels! I was very thankful to have been approached by Martin… little did I know where all this is going…Now came the next step, talking to the Masters to get their approval for this project. This took some time because they are so busy, and don't get to talk to their foreign students much. The answer from my root guru, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche didn't take too long to arrive and it was along the lines of:

"I approve from my inner heart that you can go ahead with your project. The most important thing is you should have good motivation to build prayer wheels. With good motivation, whatever work you do will be good for all. So if you have good motivation then you can move forward smoothly in this project".

Needless to explain how happy I was!.With the approval of my master things got rolling… it took me about 3 months to find good wood to lathe, and many phone calls later I had my wood. The mantra that fits in the wheels comes from America from a most wonderful man called Jim McCann, who got an order from Lama Zopa Rinpoche to construct prayer wheels… he then got a master reel of mantras from his holiness the Dalai Lama, and he makes microfilms from that reel made to order.

I am still in the process of refining my work (still haven’t found the perfect design) and I decided to make the wheels in the 100 million and 35 million sizes. My master plan was and still is, to make these wheels and sell them at cost plus a little profit, and to collect the little profit I make on them and when I have enough money, to construct big prayer wheels and donate them to hospitals and such places that need blessings… Since I make them with the help of my darling wife, and since we make them one by one manually, this takes time… so I am guessing that if people start to get interested in buying these wheels they will have to go on a waiting list… we do this as an "after work" project so it takes us even longer since we both have a full time jobs…

wooden handheld prayer wheels production #1

Galgamani prayer wheels


Galgamani prayer wheels

Galgamani prayer wheels

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Prayer Wheel studio

Hey there...

Just came back from Micha's 'studio'. Have pictured video, around 35 minuets of the wooden prayer wheel making process. Later on I plan to publish few more photos and more information about the project.

Stay on touch!