Labrang monastery

[Mark]

Turning the 1,174 prayer wheels at the Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, China.

BY ERIK ECKHOLM


HERE aren't many places where you can rack up so much good karma in so little time. Walking the one-mile-plus clockwise loop around the Labrang Monastery complex in north-central China, you can spin 1,174 brightly painted Tibetan prayer wheels lined up along the inner side of the path, sending a scripture heavenward with every push.

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There is a catch. As the monk who guided us through the inner temples repeated emphatically: "If you don't really believe, the Buddha can't protect you."

Whether because of insufficient faith, the altitude or age I can't say, but I never made the complete circuit: half an hour of brisk walking, shoving a mere few hundred of the large brass cylinders in rapid succession, left my spirits high but my right shoulder distinctly sore.

The Tibetan pilgrims walking the loop, many of them decked in splendid woolens, coral and silver, seemed to have perfected economical techniques for nudging every wheel as they made their rounds, a prelude to more circuits and chants inside the monastery temples.

Karmic dividends or not, my wife, Libby, and I and our children, Cara, 10, and Andy, 8, spent an entrancing couple of days wandering the grounds of Labrang, strolling the main street of the adjacent town, Xiahe and hiking in the yak pastures of nearby hills.

Since moving to Beijing five years ago, I'd yearned to visit this place, which is still off the radar of major tour groups but known among expatriates in China as a place for magical short holidays. The kids always seemed too young, especially given the arduous travel - a two-hour flight from Beijing and then a six-hour, hilly drive - and the third-class accommodations.

Finally last fall, we felt our children were old enough, and over the Oct. 1 National Day holiday, we ventured on a five-day trip that became one of our favorite short vacations.

Xiahe (pronounced shyah-huh) and Labrang Monastery are 9,500 feet high in a pleasant, if rather barren, mountain valley of Gansu Province. The monastery is a major center of esoteric scholarship and now houses more than 1,000 saffron-robed monks of all ages - down from nearly 4,000 a century ago, but well recovered from Chinese Communist persecution of the late 1960's when many temples were destroyed and the monks sent to work on farms.

Rest at

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/16/travel/16labrang.html

[Jaak]

A number of prayer wheels are reported to be moved not by hand but by force of wind.

Are there any computer programs to repeat prayers?