Tibetan teacher Jangchub explains how to make «offerings»

Peace Times 11

Let us learn how to practise the second of the «Seven Limbs»: water, rice and all of macrocosm’s and microcosm’s best dedicated to all holy beings

Geshe Jangchub Gyaltsen, a master of the Gelugpa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and guest of the Kunpen Lama Gangchen Centre in Milan, continues his explanation of the seven limb practice. After teaching us about the first limb (last issue) of the preliminary practice of prostration, this time he will help us to understand the second of the seven limbs, which is making offerings.

«The second preliminary practice consists in the offering of gifts to the enlightened beings, placing them on the altar, so that they are blessed and transformed into precious nectar - explains before all else Geshe Jangchub. The offerings are not needed to please the Buddhas, it is a method for us to accumulate positive energy. All of us possess a positive potentiality which we must strive to continually improve. The amount of fortune that each of us experiences in life depends on the merit we have accumulated; people who enjoy good health and a good economical situation have made positve actions in the past. Those who, however, must make a lot of effort to overcome obstacles, without ever achieving the success they hoped for, have not accumulated enough positive energy to overcome the negativities committed in their past. The accumulation of merit, depends, then and now, on us and is not something that we can acquire ready made».

«The offering of the mandala is also part of the practice for accumulating positive energy - he continues. With time, it is possible to complete 100 thousand mandala offerings. The mandala offering symbolises offering to the enlightened beings the entire universe, in the form of a circle of eight continents, situated at the cardinal and intermediate directions; (our planet is in the southern direction). We should imagine that we are offering all that is marvellous and precious from both the microcosm and macrocosm. During the offering we recite some mantras and meditate. In our left hand we take some grains, or a mala (the Buddhist rosary); with the right hand we deposit some rice grains in the centre of the mandala, rubbing our wrist three times over it in a clockwise direction. Whilst doing this we think that all our defects of body, speech and mind are purified, and that we receive all the blessings of the enlightened body, speech and mind. In the cloth we have in our lap there is rice, saffron, precious stones, coins... the precious queen, the precious general, the precious elephant, the precious horse, the precious jewel, the eight auspicious symbols... which bring joy to the sensory organs. We imagine a universe in which the best of everything that exists is gathered, on both the gross and subtle levels.

During the mandala offering, we must not forget to maintain in front of us, the visualisation of the field of merit, with our Lama and all the enlightened beings».

«It is possible to help those suffering by dedicating to them the positive energy of this practice - confirms the Geshe - we must visualise that healing nectars emanate from the enlightened beings in the form of light which purifies all living beings». He concludes by explaining: «There exist two versions of the mandala offering, one extensive and one abbreviated. In the retreat concentrating on this practice, it is possible to offer the mandala one hundred thousand times, alternating the recitations. We complete the offerings with the thought that we are accumulating positive energy to become beneficial to other sentient beings».

Carmen Robustelli - Giuseppe Tommasi