What is that thing that Tibetan monks spin?
It’s a prayer wheel (called ‘khor in Tibetan). Inside is a roll of paper or parchment with mantras written upon it, and the “random thing attached” is a weight that spins around when the monk or praying person swings it; the weight spins the mantras around inside the drum. It’s thought that by spinning the parchment inside (which has the mantra or prayer written hundreds to thousands of times; larger ones have up to millions), it achieves the same effect as chanting each mantra separately. It’s like a karmic Brillo-pad. Some prayer wheels are automatically moved by watermills, windmills, or even electronically (some can argue that mantras, saved in a file on a hard disk, can have the same effect since a hard disk spins around at a crazy amount per second). These help purify all the wind/water/electricity that passes through them.
