The story of "The Mani Man".

[The man in the mountainParticipant 4102]

I first read this when i bought the book “The snow lion’s turquoise mane” from “Lama Surya Das”, a Jewish American that went to Tibet to study Mahayana Buddhism, i hope this story will humble you a little, it did to me, a lot of the stories from Surya’s book touched my heart, i saw myself a few times sobbing uncontrollably after reading a few shocking stories even though i am a grown man already..

A prayer wheel, or mani wheel, is a wheel filled with innumerable mantras and inscriptions wrapped clockwise around a central axis. Some prayer wheels are tiny, like tops; others are huge, filling an entire room, and one turns the wheel by holding its handles and walking clockwise around it. Others are attached to running streams or waterfalls so that they can harness the natural energy and spread benedictions throughout the land. The faithful believe that spinning these prayer wheels or hanging prayer flags in the wind actualizes the inscribed prayers.

The Tibetan province of Kham is akin to America’s Wild West. The people of Kham are great equestrians, and like all who ride regularly, they love their horses. Until about a century ago, Kham was carved into dozens of smaller kingdoms, each of which had its own army, raised by forcible conscription.

There was once an old man in far eastern Kham known as the Mani Man because day and night he could always be found devotedly spinning his small homemade prayer wheel. The wheel was filled with the mantra of Great Compassion, Om Mani Padme Hung. The Mani Man lived with his son and their one fine horse. The son was the joy of the man’s life; the boy’s pride and joy was the
horse.

The man’s wife, after a long life of virtue and service, had long since departed for a more fortunate future. Father and son lived, free from excessive wants or needs, in one of several rough stone houses near a river on the edge of the flat plains. One day their steed disappeared. The neighbors bewailed the loss of the old man’s sole material asset, but the stoic old man just kept turning his prayer wheel, reciting “Om Mani Padme Hung,” Tibet’s
national mantra. To whoever inquired or expressed condolences, he simply said, “Give thanks for everything. Who can say what is good or bad? We’ll see…”

After several days the splendid creature returned, followed by a pair of wild mustangs. These the old man and his son swiftly trained. Then everyone sang songs of celebration and congratulated the old man on his unexpected good fortune. The man simply smiled over his prayer wheel and said, “I am grateful…but who knows? We shall see.”

Then, while racing one of the mustangs, the boy fell and shattered his leg. Some neighbors carried him home, cursing the wild horse and bemoaning the boy’s fate. But the old man, sitting at his beloved son’s bedside just kept turning his prayer wheel around and around while softly muttering the gentle mantra of Great Compassion. He neither complained nor answered their protestations to fate, but simply nodded his head affably, reiterating what he had said before. “The Buddha is beneficent; I am grateful for my son’s life. We shall see.”

The next week military officers appeared, seeking young conscripts for an ongoing border war. All the local boys were immediately taken away, except for the bedridden son of the Mani Man. Then the neighbors congratulated the old man on his great good fortune, attributing such luck to the good karma accumulated by the old man’s incessantly spinning prayer wheel and the constant mantras on his cracked lips. He smiled and said nothing.

One day when the boy and his father were watching their fine horses graze on the prairie grass, the taciturn old man suddenly began to sing:

“Life just goes around and around,
up and down like a waterwheel;
Our lives are like its buckets,
being emptied and refilled
Again and again.

Like the potter’s clay,
our physical existences
Are fashioned into one form after another:
The shapes are broken
and reformed again and again,
The low wall will be high,
and the high fall down;
the dark will grow light, and the rich lose all.

If you, my son, were an extraordinary child,
Off to a monastery
as an incarnation they would carry you.
If you were too bright, my son,
Shackled to other people’s disputes
at an official’s desk you would be.

One horse is one horse’s worth of trouble.
Wealth is good, but too soon loses its savor,
And can be a burden, a source of quarrel, in the end.

No one knows what karma awaits us,
But what we sow now will be
reaped in lives to come; that is certain.
So be kind to one and all
And don’t be biased,
Based upon illusions regarding gain and loss.
Have neither hope nor fear, expectation nor anxiety;
Give thanks for everything, whatever your lot may be.
Accept everything; accept everyone;
and follow Nature’s infallible Law.

Be simple and carefree,
remaining naturally at ease and in peace.

You can shoot arrows at the sky if you like, My son,
but they’ll inevitably fall back to earth.

As he sang, the prayer flags fluttered overhead, and the ancient mani wheel, filled with hundreds of thousands of handwritten mantras, just kept turning.

You can find the mantra “Om Mani Pedme Hum” online and find inner peace.

[MGTOW_MikeParticipant 6253]

I have also noticed that just accepting the present moment, brings about so much ease and tranquility. As soon as you try to control or force a situation, it only messes the surrounding energy and makes things a lot harder for you. It is absolutely amazing how easy things have gotten for me, in recent and present time, just by simply accepting what is present. Being mindful and non-judgmental.

Your post reminds me of this video:

A tranquil mind is neither happy nor sad, it is uninfluenced by external conditions.

[Cú ChulainnParticipant 3910]

I saw prayer wheels everywhere in Tibet. The exterior walls of the Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse has many bucket sized wheels laid in rows for people to perambulate around and release the prayers within. I walked around and spun them all, panting in the high altitude. Some spun freely like spinning tops, some turned a few times and stopped. It was great fun.

Many pilgrims come from all over Tibet to Tashilhunpo, its the seat of the Panchen Lama. The last one was kidnapped by the Chinese authorities after he was picked by the Dalai Lama in exile, and replaced by an ‘official’ Panchen Lama, whose parents were good communist party members. But the ‘official’ Lama has never taken his seat as the Tibetans would unseat him and probably murder him. The whereabouts of the real Panchen Lama is unknown. China is systematically destroying Tibetan culture with the influx of Han Chinese from the east. It’s cultural genocide, but international governments ignore it because of the clout of the Chinese worldwide.

Opposite the Potala Palace in Lhasa – the home of the Dalai Lama before he fled to India – is an ugly communist monument to the ‘liberation’ of Tibet in 1951 by the People’s Liberation Army. It has 24/7 military protection to stop the Tibetan people tearing it down. Some liberation.

You are allowed access to the Dalai Lama’s rooms at the top of the Potala, and many pilgrims walk for weeks to be allowed two minutes to shuffle past his little bed and 15 year old boy’s outfits that he wore in his inauguration. All his effects are still there. Some of the old women weep openly as they go past making their venerations. No cameras are permitted and if you hang about too long Chinese goons in plainclothes push you along. I tried to linger and get a picture but was immediately crowded by two of these goon f~~~s and moved on. F~~~ China, f~~~ their commie bastard government, and f~~~ their Han ‘civilization’. F~~~ all of it.

Anyway, Tibet is an amazing experience, and some of these prayer wheels are as big as the rooms they are kept in, massive, its a very unique place.

[The man in the mountainParticipant 4102]

Cú Chulainn wrote:

I saw prayer wheels everywhere in Tibet. The exterior walls of the Tashilhunpo Monastery in Shigatse has many bucket sized wheels laid in rows for people to perambulate around and release the prayers within. I walked around and spun them all, panting in the high altitude. Some spun freely like spinning tops, some turned a few times and stopped. It was great fun.

Many pilgrims come from all over Tibet to Tashilhunpo, its the seat of the Panchen Lama. The last one was kidnapped by the Chinese authorities after he was picked by the Dalai Lama in exile, and replaced by an ‘official’ Panchen Lama, whose parents were good communist party members. But the ‘official’ Lama has never taken his seat as the Tibetans would unseat him and probably murder him. The whereabouts of the real Panchen Lama is unknown. China is systematically destroying Tibetan culture with the influx of Han Chinese from the east. It’s cultural genocide, but international governments ignore it because of the clout of the Chinese worldwide.

Opposite the Potala Palace in Lhasa – the home of the Dalai Lama before he fled to India – is an ugly communist monument to the ‘liberation’ of Tibet in 1951 by the People’s Liberation Army. It has 24/7 military protection to stop the Tibetan people tearing it down. Some liberation.

You are allowed access to the Dalai Lama’s rooms at the top of the Potala, and many pilgrims walk for weeks to be allowed two minutes to shuffle past his little bed and 15 year old boy’s outfits that he wore in his inauguration. All his effects are still there. Some of the old women weep openly as they go past making their venerations. No cameras are permitted and if you hang about too long Chinese goons in plainclothes push you along. I tried to linger and get a picture but was immediately crowded by two of these goon f~~~s and moved on. F~~~ China, f~~~ their commie bastard government, and f~~~ their Han ‘civilization’. F~~~ all of it.

Anyway, Tibet is an amazing experience, and some of these prayer wheels are as big as the rooms they are kept in, massive, its a very unique place.

I really hope someday to travel to holy India or Nepal like you did, i know a trip like that would change my life deeply since i researched vastly the information about their beliefs and ideas.

It resonates with my deeply, ever since i was born i lived a simple life, i don’t think that will change any time soon, but we shall see :).

[Cú ChulainnParticipant 3910]

Its a magnificent part of the world. Richest in culture and diversity of spirituality.

Even in Afghanistan I had time to visit the now destroyed Buddhas of Bamiyan. 1500 years ago this was a centre of Buddhist retreat and learning. The cliffs are still dotted with hermits caves. To their credit the local Hazara people – descendants of Genghis Khan, and treated like s~~~ for their Shia faith – were against the destruction of “their” buddhas by the Taliban.

I got to see the Masjid-i Jami mosque in Herat, a wonderfully spiritual place, and a beautiful city smack bang in the middle of the Persian desert and the Silk Road. Also in Turpan, Xinjiang I visited the mud brick Emin mosque, whose minaret is the largest in China. The Uyghurs of Xinjiang are also persecuted by the bastard Han Chinese in their own homeland.

I could go on all day LOL, but Asia made a big impression on me. Saw Pakistan and bits of India too. Its amazingly cheap to travel around, and better if you scruff up a bit. But Tibet and even China itself are some of the safest places for an individual to travel. I did all this on my own with no itinerary, just went wherever seemed best to go, many places had no European visitors for months, maybe years, it was obvious with the attention I got from the locals, especially the kids, all super friendly as well. China had great mysteries too, but when I reached Tibet I went off the Chinese big time. Cultural chauvinism is the polite description of their mindset, and what they’re doing to indigenous peoples to their west. Beijing time is the official time in Tibet too – look on a map to see the sheer idiocy of their mindset. Communist bastards.

[Cú ChulainnParticipant 3910]

Oh and Iraq had a few gems too – Ur and the supposed location of the hanging gardens of Babylon at Hillah. I lived for three years there, mostly in the south, where the Tigris and Euphrates join and form the Shatt-al-Arab. This is biblical country, but I couldn’t ramble about because of the war. One day I hope to go back when its safer.

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