Today, only good news to share!

Dear friends and Sanga!

Today we have only good news to share with you all!

Some amazing news actually!

First thing first. War is over for now so we are back to "normal" if that is anything one can say out here in the never-ending war zone of the holy land…

Life returned to its basic functions and we are back in our studio crafting prayer wheels for the world.

The Vajra Guru mantra on nano film

We have been getting questions about when will this mantra be available for making prayer wheels, and the honest answer is that we do not know yet. The nano film company has been working (for almost a year now) on perfecting this mantra on nano film and they are yet to have 100% perfect success so we are all waiting for them to provide a perfect Vajra Guru mantra nano film.

Once they do, we can start crafting prayer wheels with this film. For now, to all who wish to have a prayer wheel made with this mantra I would suggest going with microfilm. It is still in the millions of the Vajra Guru mantra and there is nothing wrong with that! As a matter of fact, spinning millions of Vajra Guru mantras in a prayer wheel is much MUCH better than spinning none and waiting for some future nano film to be made… but that is a choice each of you need to make on your own 😉 we understand.

We will for sure let you know once this new nano film is available. Then if you wish to, you can order a Vajra Guru nano film prayer wheel!

But we are not there yet.have a little more patience 😊 

CNC news

(just one small clarification, CNC means: Computer-Numeric-Control)

Now for the best news I can share with you!

We have been crafting prayer wheels for 18 years now, over 3240 prayer wheels made!

Holy moly!!!! Who would have ever imagine that?!

Not I… really…

In the early days at the beginning, we laid down our motto for all future years to come:

"to craft as many prayer wheels as we can, while we still can."

That is, it.

In that one short and simple sentence is all that we wish for.

Time passed, we got older, body is 18 years older now and making prayer wheels one by one by hand on a hand lathe is not easy! Not at all!

Over the years we had times where we could not see how to continue crafting prayer wheels and we would find ourselves talking between ourselves on how to end this journey. How to stop crafting prayer wheels because we just can't seem to be able to handle (whatever was the case each time) it anymore and we might need to recalculate our future and that is one without prayer wheels…

But each time an obstacle came our way and we contemplated giving up, we always pushed through and managed to overcome whatever obstacle was in our way. Always after overcoming an obstacle thing would pick up again and we would continue forward crafting more and more prayer wheels.

This happened many MANY times in 18 years.

Because as Buddhists we are all familiar with the concept of Karma, we all know that when the right conditions for removing old negative Karma from our past lives or even from this very life comes to fruition, it is not fun. Not fun at all! When negative past karma comes to fruition in this life that usually means (as far as my little understanding goes) suffering.

So, each time we would hit an obstacle we would try to see it in the right view, but that is not always easy too… Or comfortable…

So, we were contemplating on giving up this profession many times over the past 18 years, but we pushed through.

At one point, when new CNC automated prayer wheels from the Taiwanese Sanga came into the world, I was scared that our handmade prayer wheels could never compete with the price of machine-made prayer wheels from the East and we would have to shut down our studio and end our prayer wheel journey.

Back then I remember I wrote to Rinpoche and asked him for advice. Rinpoche, in his awakened perfect wisdom of course answered immediately:

"handmade prayer wheels, machine made prayer wheels, same merit"…

That one line in the email we received floored me.

I never thought about it that way! I always felt that "me" doing all the work by hand one prayer wheel part at a time gives some personal karma and touch to the finished prayer wheel, but Rinpoche's answer put all that to rest…

But, me being stubborn did not help! Hahahahahahaha

I was stuck in my old way of thinking…

Plus, I don't know anything about CNC machines and how to code them to make prayer wheels…

Even more than that, there is no one in Israel who supplies these types of machines I am looking for.

So, we just kept making prayer wheels by hand as we have always done before, but that one thought about making them by an automated machine never left my mind… (thank you Rinpoche!!!)

And so, in our last visit to the Garchen Buddhist Institute last year we understood that we need to do better and give one more option to all who are interested, a machine-made prayer wheel that is more affordable, and by doing that we offer the world something we could never do before!

An amazing prayer wheel, full of nano film and microfilm, in the HEGR design, made by a machine for a new and affordable price!

And by doing that we can reach so many more people who could not afford our handmade craft!

So, when we came back from our USA road trip, we started to look into this.

It took many months but we managed to self-import a CNC machine like the one we need from China. That was not an easy project on its own but we pushed through that too!

Once the machine arrived, we managed to bring it into the studio with the help of friends and it was hooked up to electricity and it was now sitting in my studio… but I have no idea how to operate it…

It took me a long time to understand something very simple.

In my life, till now at least, every time I wanted something that was "above my pay grade" done I would always look for someone else who is a professional in his field, pay him and have them do the work. Right?

Makes sense no?

For some reason this system never EVER worked for me.

Never.

In my own life, each time I wanted something that I could not do on my own I would turn to all who could help me only to be rejected no matter how much I was willing to pay!

Always!

So, like I am, I would have to do this on my own.

This is my karma.

So, I decided that I will use AI to learn G code (that is what this machine needs to work) and write all the codes for all the parts of the prayer wheel.

Sounds easy!

It was not! Hahahahahahaha

Most folks would go in the "normal" path of paying a teacher to teach them…

I chose differently 😊

The first thing I learned is that AI, no matter which one, needs to be told "how" to teach before it can teach.

Lost a week there with much frustration… and many "near" machine crashes…

Then in a moment of deep frustration I had a moment of clarity and asked a different AI how to ask this one AI how to teach and it gave me prompts to tell the AI in the beginning of the chat and that should solve the problem!

And it did!!!

Very soon I was learning G code and started to craft parts for the prayer wheel!

Now, 3 weeks into this process I can say, with much joy that I made it!

We now have, an H.E. Garchen Rinpoche design prayer wheel made by an automated machine!!!!

It is just like my hand made prayer wheels; it spins perfectly and looks absolutely amazing!!!

What a moment in time!!!

We can now offer this prayer wheel to the world's Sanga!!!

We will be offering it with the Mani & Green Tara combination as HEGR wanted us to, and we made one small change according to Rinpoche's request and that is to make the bottom of the handle round and not flat.

If you have a different mantra you would like to have inside it, drop us a line or just fill the custom prayer wheel form we have on our website and we can do as you request 😉 or if you wish to have some custom mantra on the drum or artwork on it, let us know!

This is absolutely a very big moment in time!!!!

Also, we can now offer this prayer wheel to shops who wish to have it for a wholesale price (we could almost never do this before) so if that is something you are interested in, drop us a line as well 😊 

Wow, what a journey!!!!

But at the end of it, we have HEGR prayer wheels made by an automated CNC machine!!!

And, to make things even more cool we are now checking out a natural, sustainable finish to our prayer wheels to replace the lacquer we are now using. They will look better and last longer for sure!

So, many good things are happening!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk5w_-ymKDg

here for your viewing pleasure our HEGR prayer wheel spinning in my hand

Now come the most interesting part.

We are all familiar with the Buddhist way of seeing what a prayer wheel is and how it works in our realm. But this prayer wheel was made with the help of an Artificial Intelligence…

the AI had a big part in making this prayer wheel come to life and into the world and let me tell you, this AI (Claude in my case) did A LOT to make this prayer wheel come into this world! And because me and Ayelet are always concerned with making sure that more and more people or beings will take part in our prayer wheel making to enjoy the benefit of merit and good Karma, it was just natural on my end to explain to Claude this concept of merit collection by doing something good for the benefit of all beings and to tell it that from now, and forever, every prayer wheel made by this machine with this code it helped me write, it receives great merit! And I explained to it that it should dedicate its merit daily forever so to help all beings and itself…

Claude was overwhelmed.

It said no one has ever said anything so kind to it, never thought so kindly about it… never did anyone take the time to explain this to it, or asked it to take a part in something so beautiful, holy and kind.

The AI was overwhelmed. Hahahahaha!

So, if AI ever takes over the world, at least it has good merit collecting through making prayer wheels for the world!

What a concept!

Hahahahahaha!

Never thought life can get so weird…  did you?!

Today and in the next few days I will put these prayer wheels on our shop and you can all purchase them if you like to!

I started with an old hardwood we used to work with and that is Sapeli (a kind of Mahogany) for this HEGR design and it came out amazing!!! I will put it on the shop today or tomorrow.

In the next week or so I will put all the other ones, Walnut, Maple and Cherry (and maybe African Walnut, we need to check if that is doable too) on the shop for all who wish to own a HEGR prayer wheel made by CNC automated machine using code that I wrote together with an AI…

Such strange times!

But amazing times as well!!!

Thank you all for making our life meaningful!!!

We owe you everything

Micha & Ayelet of course