The significance and role of the transepts

The symbolism and function of the sutra-turning cylinder are as follows:

1. Significance: There are sutra-turners everywhere in Tibet, who see them as reciting scriptures, which is the best way to confess the past, eliminate calamities, and cultivate merits and virtues. Stupas are built all over Tibet, equipped with sutra-turners, and they even take them with them at all times, turning them whenever they have a spare moment.

2. Tibetans are religious,, so most of them, put their hopes on this spinning sutra. In the past years, in the cycle of life and death, in the murmured six true words, in the grease-coated hands of devout believers, it spins round and round, transmitting the communication between the Buddha and the Tibetans.

3. Role: One turn is tantamount to reciting the Great Tibetan Sutra. Spinning two times is equivalent to reciting the whole sutra. Spinning three times can eliminate the body, mouth, mind and sins, and ten weeks will eliminate sins like Mount Sumeru. A person who spins one hundred times is equal to the merit of King Yama. A thousand revolutions will fulfill the Dharma. Spinning ten thousand syllables will set all living beings, free. With one hundred thousand revolutions, one can reach the holy place of the Guanyin Sea Society, and with one million revolutions, one can bring happiness to all the people in the six seas of the six paths of rebirth. Each rotation frees all beings in the six paths of rebirth from the sea of suffering. A person who spins millions of revolutions has merit equal to that of Guanyin Bodhisattva.