During my travels in Nepal, I saw many monks and every day folks walking around spinning their hand-held their prayer wheels. It’s an ancient practice to help clear negative karma and energy and gain purification and merit.

The Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheel is a praying instrument that displays the sacred mantra 'OM MANI PADME HUM' (Om the Jewel in the Lotus Hum). The symbols are usually carved or cast onto the outside top barrel of the wheel. Inside the wheel is a scroll containing the same words or other ancient scripts and prayers, printed numerous times and rolled tightly, so are you spin the wheel the text is repeated in multiples. This generates as much merit as reading them.

The cylinder body sits on a metal or simple wooden handle. With a slight rotation of the wrist, you can start the wheel turning and the ballasted chain attatched to the top keeps the momentum going. These wheels are not only hand held but are fixed to the gates and doorways of monasteries. They come in every size, large and small. I once turned one that was over six feet tall in downtown Kathmandu.

In the article, Advice on the Benefits of Prayer Wheels,(Given at Land of Medicine Buddha, June 1994) Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, “In Solu Kumbu all the old men and women turn prayer wheels every day. When they are at home in the morning and in the evening before they go to bed, they hold a mala in their left hand, a prayer wheel in their right, and recite OM MANI PADME HUNG. And when they walk around, they constantly turn the prayer wheel and recite OM MANI PADME HUNG.

I often used to think, "How does turning of the prayer wheel become Dharma practice?" I had this question in my mind, simply because I was ignorant as to the benefits of the practice. I didn't know what an important practice it is and how beneficial it is in terms of purification. Just touching and turning a prayer wheel brings incredible purification and accumulates unbelievable merit.”

Protection from disease:

Lama Zopa Rinpoche also writes, “It is also mentioned that prayer wheels stop harms from spirits and other beings and also stop disease, so one idea I have is use them for healing. Anyone with a disease such as AIDS or cancer, whether or not they have any understanding of Dharma, can use the prayer wheel for meditation and healing. For example, sick people could come here to Land of Medicine Buddha for several hours every day to turn the prayer wheel and do the visualizations.”

Visualizations: (Source: Advice on the Benefits of Prayer Wheels, by Lama Zopa Rinpoche)

"There are two visualizations. With the first, you 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. You then visualize the light illuminating all sentient beings and purifying all their sufferings, as well as their negative karmas and obscurations.

With the second visualization, 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, the negative karmas and obscurations. All these are absorbed or sucked into the prayer wheel. While reciting five or 10 malas of the mantra, you visualize purifying yourself in this way.

At the end recite some malas 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. (You can also do circumambulations with the same visualizations.)"