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It takes Sangha many hours each day to offer water bowls as part of the extensive offerings at Kachoe Dechen Ling.
Since 1999, Lama Zopa Rinpoche has arranged to have continual extensive offerings of water bowls and lights offered twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year to create merit for the FPMT organization. Since this began over two decades ago, these offerings have been increasing and are now happening in various parts of the world.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche has explained, “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.”
Rinpoche personally incorporates all of these actual physically made offerings in his daily practices and when doing food offerings he sometimes leads an extensive practice where all of the offerings are visualized and multiplied and then mentally offered to Buddha, Dharma, Sangha and all the holy objects around the world.
Rinpoche advises students, whenever making offerings in our practice, that we can also remember all the other arranged offerings in Kachoe Dechen Ling, CA, US; Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, WA, US; and also in all the FPMT centers around the world, by using these actual offerings as a basis and then visualizing and multiplying them. In this way, we can join in the merit from those having made these extensive offerings every day.
Extensive offerings at Kachoe Dechen Ling, CA, US.
Please Rejoice in Some of the Extensive Offerings Around the World
- Thousands of light offerings, hundreds of water bowls, and a garden full of flower offerings at Kachoe Dechen Ling, CA, US.
- Thousands of light offerings, hundreds of water bowls, and a garden full of flower offerings at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, WA, US.
- Thousands of light offerings, hundreds of water bowls, and gardens full of flowers offerings at Root Institute, Bodhgaya, India.
- Thousands of lights, hundreds of water bowls and gardens full of flower offering at Kopan Monastery, Nepal.
- 100,000 lights continually offered at Amitabha Buddhist Centre (ABC), Singapore.
- 100,001 lights continually offered at Chokyi Gyaltsen Center, Malaysia.
- Thousands of water bowl offerings, extensive light offerings at Ganden Do Ngag Shedrub Ling Center, Mongolia. These offerings are made daily by a group of very dedicated elderly volunteers.
- Continually burning butter lamp in front of precious stupa with Trulshik Rinpoche’s holy body in Chailsa, Nepal.
- Continually burning butter lamp in front of Guru Lhakang, Thubten Choeling, Chailsa, Nepal
Please rejoice and remember all these extensive offerings that happen every moment of every day!
Water bowls and extensive offerings at Ganden Do Ngag Shedrub Ling Center, Mongolia, offered by a dedicated group of elderly volunteers.
The Actual Offering Prayer
The actual offering prayer is recited five times, ten times, one thousand times, or however many times you want to make offerings.
These clouds of (light) offerings, both actually arranged and mentally emanated, filling space,
Are manifestations of my own innate awareness, the dharmakāya.
These clouds of offerings equaling the sky,
I offer to all the gurus, the Three Rare Sublime Ones,
And all the statues, stūpas, and scriptures, which are manifestations of my guru.
By the merits of generating bodhicitta, making charity to the numberless sentient beings, and making these (light) offerings to the gurus, the Three Rare Sublime Ones, and all the holy objects in the ten directions—
For all those sentient beings who rely upon me,
All those for whom I have promised to pray,
All those whose names have been given to me,
And, principally, those who have a connection with me, my servants, benefactors, and disciples
As well as all remaining transmigratory beings, both living and dead—
May the rays of the lights of the five wisdoms completely purify
all their degenerated vows and samayas right now!
May all the sufferings of the evil-gone realms cease right now!
May the three realms of saṃsāra be emptied right now!
May all impure minds and obscurations be purified right now!
May all impure appearances be purified right now!
May the five holy bodies and wisdoms spontaneously arise!
—From Extensive Offering Practice: A Practice to Accumulate the Most Extensive Merit with Light and Other Offerings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Through the Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund Rinpoche supports a number of Sangha to make many of these offerings daily, as well as covering the cost of electricity for the extensive light offerings at Kachoe Dechen Ling, Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, Kopan Monastery in 2021, and Root Institute, as well as the butter for the continual light offerings in Nepal and also occasionally the meals to the kind volunteers of Ganden Do Ngag Shedrub Ling Center, Mongolia.
Extensive offerings at Kopan Monastery, Nepal.
You can learn more about the many beneficial activities of the Lama Zopa Rinpoche Bodhichitta Fund or other Charitable Projects of FPMT.