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Medicine Buddha statue at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, USA. Photo by Chris Majors.
The Sangha living at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land (BAPL), located in North Central Washington state in the United States, engage in weekly practices for animals and make extensive offerings to holy objects.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche often explains the benefits of offering to many holy objects and encourages extensive offerings around the world.
We are not aware of the limitless skies of benefits we achieve from the practice of offering, what we can achieve and enjoy from life to life. Even while you are in samsara, you enjoy good rebirths, wealth, and every happiness. Even just the samsaric perfections are amazing, without adding all those incredible realizations that allow us to offer deep benefit to sentient beings, liberating them from oceans of samsaric suffering and its cause, delusion and karma.
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche, (from Extensive Offerings, published by FPMT Education Services)
Extensive offerings at BAPL, Washington, USA. Photo by Chris Majors.
Weekly animal liberation practice and charity for ants, extensive daily offering practices, and nightly dharma protector practices and sur are offered. All of this is done with extensive dedications and prayers for the entire FPMT organization and all beings, as requested by Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
Offering to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, BAPL, USA. Photo by Chris Majors.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche has said that by having as many holy objects as possible, when you enter the room then you can put your palms together in the mudra of prostration to all the holy objects, looking at each tiny holy object and prostrating. You can look around the room with your hands in the mudra of prostration and think “I am prostrating to all the buddhas.” When you do this you collect eight benefits in that second so for however many thousands or hundreds of pictures of buddhas, statues, tsa-tsas etc. you have, merely by placing your palms together respectfully you receive these eight benefits, the last benefit is that you will be enlightened.
Some of the many holy objects such as tsa tsas’s at BAPL, USA. Photo by Chris Majors.
In this way, in just one second, it is so easy to collect merit because there are so many pictures of deities and buddhas; even in one photo there are many buddhas, such as the Guru Puja merit field or the thirty-five buddhas, even in one picture there are so many merit fields. Each time you prostrate to them you collect that many causes of enlightenment, that many causes of liberation from samsara and, by the way, happiness of future lives.
Extensive offerings to the Thirty-Five Confession Buddhas. Photo by Chris Majors.
So you can see that it is very helpful to have many pictures and statues for prostrations, it helps the visualization and also with each prostration you do to just one holy object you create incredible causes, so the more holy objects the more causes you create.
When you prostrate you can think of all the ten direction buddhas, Dharma, sangha, statues, stupas, scriptures, tsa-tsas etc.; if you have many, many pictures of holy objects it makes it very easy to visualize the ten directions actually filled with buddhas. This is also very good if you can’t visualize very well.
When you are not prostrating, but even just entering the room where you have all the holy objects (the gompa or your meditation room), if you put your palms together to the holy objects every time, then in that second it is an unbelievable easy way to collect extensive merit.
Extensive Offerings to holy objects and the Dalai Lama lineage. Photo by Chris Majors.
Amitabha Buddha statue at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Washington, USA. Photo by Chris Majors.
Extensive offerings to 21 Tara, BAPL, USA. Photo by Chris Majors.
It is explained by Buddha in the Sutra of the Mudra of Developing the Power of Devotion:
The minute you see a holy object you create infinite merits, so no question, if you actually make prostrations, offerings and so forth, you create far greater merit.
Holy objects and extensive offerings at BAPL, USA. Photo by Chris Majors.
Please rejoice in the offerings and practices that take place daily at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land and the beautiful photography of Chris Majors which shows the extensive offerings to the holy objects.
The Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund enables Rinpoche’s compassionate service to others to flourish. You can learn more about other beneficial activities this fund supports.