Prayer wheel turns for Christchurch earthquake victims

An Auckland Buddhist temple is inviting New Zealanders to use its new prayer wheel - said to be the world’s most powerful - to pray this weekend for world peace and for calm in earthquake-ravaged Canterbury.

The Dorje Chang Institute in Avondale has completed building one of the largest Buddhist prayer wheels in the world, and will be showing it to the public for the first time at its annual open day this Sunday.

Traditionally, Tibetan Buddhist prayer wheels contained scrolls of paper, but using microfilm technology, the centre has managed to pack 111 billion Buddhist mantras, over five million prayers and 500 Buddhist texts into the 2.5m tall and 1.4m wide drum, weighing over four tonne.

The largest traditional prayer wheels in Tibet and Mongolia contain about 10 million mantras.

Followers believe that turning the prayer wheel has the same effect as reading the mantras it contains, and the more mantras a wheel holds, the more powerful its effect.  Read Article

By Lincoln Tan