Tibet Tech Hand-held Prayer Wheel - 84,348,750,000 prayers on 8 DVDs

fine idea. personal problem, i do mostly female mantras - taras, kurukulle, yeshe tshogyal, and those mantras spin widdershins. no option for that.also these things are delicate and they fall over and the dvds scratch, shatter, and the knob breaks off and takes part of the disk with it. there would be some replacement.who's to say if these do anything. the idea is fine. the intention is okay, but remove the sakya underpinnings so all schools can feel free to use them.need more drollo, tshogyal, dzambalah. deities for bliss, wealth, liberation from obstacles... etc.... good ideas here , need extrapolation... sontinue and expand concept....and get back to market or license to someone who is up to keeping stock and to making the market

Tibet Tech Hand-held Prayer Wheel - 84,348,750,000 prayers on 8 DVDs  I had bought a prayer wheel from another vendor and used it on occasion, but didn't "feel" anything--I thought it was me. I then bought this prayer wheel from Tibet Tech and, expecting to have the same experience, I gave the wheel it's first turn--WOW! I felt some kind of...power...like the force of the mantras? I have never experienced something like that. I thought that this must have just been my imagination, but every time I use it I experience the same thing. I went back to my original prayer wheel, and thought (trying to be scientific about the whole thing) that I would now have a similar experience, but did not--I felt nothing. So I do not want to be parted from my prayer wheel (attachment) and I believe I have now experienced what "a blessing" is.The product is *very* well made, high quality in all the parts. It spins so easily, like a dream. It has all the advantages of high quality manufacturing. The instructions are extremely clear, with pictures for every step--beautifully done.I have 2 cautions: The DVDs sit on the stick. The clear "jewel" you see on the top screws the DVDs to the metal rod just below them, but the metal rod is not attached to the wood handle and can fall off if you tip the wheel too far (like parallel to the floor). Also, the DVD cover (on the top, bottom, and sides of the wheel) that you see is cardboard, which means it can dent on the edges, or water spills will damage it, etc. I don't feel that I can carry this to and from my meditation group. Other than that, as a dharma item that I treat with respect and reverence I am extremely happy with it--wouldn't trade it for another prayer wheel!It does need to stand up when not used (or else take the top off I guess). They sell a holder which I bought and it works great--I tried a bud vase but the one I had was too lightweight and fell over easy.I highly, highly recommend this wheel.

This is a great concept and I really like it, but it has several problems with quality and execution. First, the good. The handle is nice, and the faux crystal weight used to spin the wheel is very pretty. It spins very smoothly, and I love the energy that comes from it.Now for the problems. The most minor problem is that the part that connects the spinning mechanism to the handle isn't connected in any way, so if it is picked up by the top or if it is turned upside down, the whole top portion falls from the handle. While this isn't a problem for me since I'm aware of it, when people handle the prayer wheel for the first time, even if they are familiar with traditional prayer wheels, they are likely going to have the top fall off. This isn't really a flaw, but it's something to keep in mind, since it's a terrible feeling to see a prayer wheel smack into the ground. I've had this happen several times when people ask to use it, but now I'm trained to warn people about it.A very big problem is how incredibly cheap the DVDs are enclosed. All that is covering the DVDs are 3 PIECES OF PAPER. Seriously. A circle of paper is glued to the top, a circle of paper is glued to the bottom, and a strip of paper around the edge. The strip around the edge is literally SCOTCH TAPED in place. And any time you put down the prayer wheel, the paper gets dinged up. This causes the prayer wheel to look terrible very quickly. Both myself and the only other person I know that has this prayer wheel chose to fabricate a proper enclosure. I used wood and he used cloth. After modifying it, it looks nice and is durable, though it took many hours of effort to accomplish. But seriously, even $30 prayer wheels have metal enclosures. At $141, scotch taping paper is absolutely ridiculous to me.Also, the little faux jewel on top has a very cheap plastic threading which screws into the piece under it. The faux jewel that came with the prayer wheel was extremely crooked. This made it wobble when spinning it, which looked silly and was distracting. I contacted Tibet Tech and was mailed a replacement very promptly, which was not quite as crooked. Using a Dremel I was eventually able to make it level. Over time the threading simply snapped off and the whole thing needed to be super glued.Now for the BIGGEST PROBLEM. After a lot a Googling, I found a website where the founder of Tibet Tech explained the process of creating the DVDs for these prayer wheels. I find it noteworthy that this information isn't available on the Tibet Tech website. Anyway, it explains that they put the mantras "into an evenly spaced 10-by-5,000-cell Microsoft Excel worksheet matrix, which was printed to an Adobe Acrobat PDF file containing 50,000 mantras. One thousand of these PDF files were compressed into a single zip file containing 50 million mantras. For each of the eight mantras, as many of the zipped files as possible were copied to a DVD." The BIG PROBLEM is that zipping duplicates of the same file doesn't maintain the same amount of information. What I mean is that 5 duplicates of a file compressed together will be about the same size as 1000 duplicates compressed together, or 1 million, 1 billion etc. This is because file compression programs see it's the same file so they just add a multiplier. So it just adds x5 or x1000 or x1,000,000 etc. to the original compressed file. This means the DVDs really contain 1/1000 the amount of mantras they say they do, so about 84 million. Granted, that's still a whole lot, but the 84 billion claim is really wrong. I suspect the Tibet Tech people simply misunderstood how file compression works and weren't being dishonest. You can actually get far more mantras, for much cheaper, by ordering them on microfilm. This also complies with traditional instructions on creating prayer wheels better than using DVDs (such as the mantras supposed to be facing outwards, etc.)I'm very grateful to Tibet Tech for propagating the concept of digital prayer wheels, which I personally think are effective if a person has a good understanding and faith in it. However, the poor build quality and the EXTREMELY inaccurate 84 billion claim take off a lot of stars for me. Knowing what I know now, I would have made my own using a DVD burner (or better yet, a blu-ray burner!), or purchased a reel of microfilm.

This is a very cost effective prayer wheel, but you have to buy in to a conviction that the way a DVD stores mantras which may by random storage access, works. It's not sexy like a traditional wood prayer wheel, but it pumps out an inconceivably high number of mantras. I find I have to use WD40 oil to keep the mechanism working smoothly.

I recently ordered and received one of the hand held Tibet Tech Prayer Wheels. They are wonderfully made. beautiful, and inspiring. They are also easy to spin and a pleasure to use. When I opened the shipping box, I immediately felt the positive power of the prayer wheel even before first spinning it, and could feel it quickly transform the atmosphere in my home. This surprised me. My wife and I both use the prayer wheel daily and and love it. It has become a very important part of our daily practice. Thanks to Chuck Pettis and H.H. Jigdal Dagchen Sakya at the Sakya Monastery in Seattle, for all their knowledge, hard work and research in making these exceptional and very blessed prayer wheels available to all.. May all sentient beings benefit from the use of the Tibet Tech Prayer Wheels. Very highly recommended.