My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you very much for your letter. Establishing a prayer wheel in the ocean has been my interest for many years. Does the prayer wheel touch the water or not? In Solu Khumbu we have the prayer wheel above the water and the life tree, the central shaft of the prayer wheel, goes down below and touches the water. There is a wooden wheel and the water runs through the wood, which is cut hollow, and hits the wheel and turns it. So that is okay. Even if the prayer wheel is above the water, as long as the water touches the life tree connected to the wheel and turns it, that’s okay.

There are many prayer wheels like this in Solu Khumbu and Tibet, and the water that touches the prayer wheel purifies all the animals and even the people who drink it. As the water flows on from one area to another, all the animals are purified, as well as the people who drink the water. But I don’t know if it is possible, for example, for the top of the prayer wheel to touch the water and go around that way. Do you know if there is a way to protect the top of the prayer wheel so that this can happen?

Thank you very much for your  three-month Vajrasattva retreat and all of that. I want to thank you millions and billions and zillions of times. And I want to thank you a billion times that you paid attention to your life and that you took care of your life, by purifying the negative karmas from where all the suffering arises.

I was in Taiwan many years ago and I met a rich family who had built many monasteries. I was talking about building a prayer wheel in the ocean that connects Taiwan with China— there is a place near the ocean with a cave on top that I thought would be a good place to build a prayer wheel. So I told the family about the benefits of a prayer wheel touching and blessing the water that mixes with the ocean. It purifies the negative karma of all the numberless beings who live in the water and of those who drink it. The family was so surprised and they kept silent. Later they told me that they became rich by selling fish so they were thinking of a way to repay the kindness of the fish, but they didn’t know what to do and that’s why they were shocked when I told the story. We haven’t had a connection with that family for many years now. Maybe one time the mother came to teachings that I gave.

There are so many Chinese families who make their living by selling fish, so to repay the kindness of the fish by establishing a prayer wheel in the water is so good. It helps all the numberless sentient beings in the ocean to be liberated. It might inspire many other people, Chinese or even others, to do the same. You can fill up the inside of the prayer wheel with paper. We have here in Nepal and India prayers printed on paper that are such small letters, but so clear and perfect that it’s almost like a manifestation of the Buddha in the form of letters. So fill the prayer wheels up with these.

In the West there are so many prayer wheels—not only big ones but even hand-turned prayer wheels —that students have made, which contain several hundred million mantras on microfiche. Even those hand prayer wheels the students have contain the same number of mantras as several huge prayer wheels in Tibet, because the prayers are on microfiche.

With much love and prayers...