The Legend Story of the First Prayer Wheel / Prayer for World Peace and Welfare

According to this legend, Dipankara Buddha, the first Buddha of this eon, created the first prayer wheel and gave it to the Nagas, who later offered it to Bodhisattva Nagarjuna, after which prayer wheels spread widely through the world in many forms. This Mani wheel is said to contain billions of mantras of Buddhas, deities, and Dharma protectors, including the translated words of the Buddha in the Derge Kangyur, and to bring blessings to its surroundings, its builders, and those who visit and venerate it. It is presented as a field of enormous merit that benefits all beings by preventing disease, obstacles, and war, and by promoting harmony, prosperity, longevity, good health, and peace. Touching and spinning it with the motivation to benefit all beings is said to purify negative karma and obscurations and accumulate inconceivable merit, while the mantras radiating outward with each rotation make offerings to the Buddhas, shower love upon beings in the six realms, lessen self-grasping, and increase love, compassion, and bodhiema. Spinning the wheel is also described as practicing the virtues of body, speech, and mind at once through physical action, the sending out of mantras, and sustained mindful awareness. A prayer for world peace and welfare supplicates the three jewels, the three roots, Avalokiteśhvara, Jetsün Tara, and Guru Padmasambhava for blessings that its aspiration be fulfilled, amid an age of imbalance, epidemic disease, warfare, destructive natural forces, and harms to the teachings, and asks that such harms be pacified, that Bodhieitta arise in all beings, that destructive thoughts and deeds cease, that loving minds, well-being, glory, and prosperity prevail throughout the world, and that the Buddha's teachings spread far and endure.

Braddock, Virginia · United States