How to Bless Tea

How to Bless Tea

Date of Advice:
October 2016
Date Posted:
January 2017

Advice on prayers and practices to bless tea produced for sale at a Dharma center.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you so much for the tea that you offered. I have been thinking about the tea. Many different centers only survive by donations, but in the past I did think about whether there could be a small business of selling tea that could help generate support for centers. At that time, I was told that the outer packaging is also important—like tea packaged in a Japanese way, looking very expensive. I was told that it seems the packaging is also important.

Thank you very much, I enjoyed the tea. I thought even without milk, this tea would be very good.

When I was thinking about the tea business in the past I had the thought that I would request Denma Lochö Rinpoche, a very high lama in Dharamsala, to bless one hundred packets of tea. I thought that with Rinpoche’s prayers on the tea, it could really benefit people, but Rinpoche passed away.

Anyway, regarding the tea that you are producing, this is what I suggest to bless the tea. It would be very good if the tea could be blessed by a group of Sangha, or it could be just one or two Sangha. The first day of the blessing could be a Medicine Buddha puja at the center. It would be very good to bless the tea for one week before it is sold, and that way many prayers could be done on the tea.

Doing strong prayers for seven days could have a lot of effect and bring benefit to the mind, not only the body. That would help a lot of people, especially those who drink with faith, but also for anyone who drinks it.

The way to pray

Specifically pray to Medicine Buddha:

May anyone who drinks this tea, may it help heal all their physical sicknesses and mental sicknesses, such as depression, cancer, diabetes, and all the curable and incurable sicknesses of the mind and body. May anybody who drinks this tea be healed immediately.

May anyone who drinks the tea be able to correctly follow the virtuous friend, to have all the realizations up to enlightenment, the omniscient mind, and especially to develop loving kindness, compassion and bodhicitta.

May anyone who drinks the tea, may it totally change their mind from harming others to cherishing others and benefiting others.

This is for the Sangha to know how to pray and to make strong prayers, and not only Sangha but anyone who blesses the tea.

The actual prayers to use

Best would be to start with the extensive Medicine Buddha Puja. This is very long and extensive so it may not be possible, but you can keep this in mind anytime the center does the extensive Medicine Buddha Puja, to bless the tea at the same time.

If not the extensive Medicine Buddha Puja, then start with the mid-length Medicine Buddha Puja. This is the normal Medicine Buddha Puja that is done at the centers. Make strong prayers to Medicine Buddha to bless the tea, as mentioned above.

Then for the following six days, you can either do the mid-length Medicine Buddha Puja each day to bless the tea, or you can do the Medicine Buddha Sadhana (this is a shorter practice, but it contains the Seven Medicine Buddha names recitations) or if there is only a short amount of time, then you can do the Blessing Medicine prayer that I have put together.

With much love and prayers...

[Note: the Medicine Buddha pujas and sadhana are available for free download from FPMT.]