The Benefits of Making Offerings

By Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Singapore March 2013 (Archive #1922)

A teaching on the benefits of making offerings to holy objects and how to create skies of merit by reciting the Offering Cloud Mantra. This teaching was given by Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Amitabha Buddhist Centre, Singapore, March 2013. Edited by Ven. Tenzin Tsultrim; second edit by Sandra Smith.

See also The Benefits of the Clouds of Offering Mantra, and Lama Zopa Rinpoche's Online Advice Book. An Extensive Offering Practice booklet is available from FPMT.

The Offering Cloud Mantra

Even if you have only one water bowl, if you recite this mantra, it becomes numberless offerings to the buddhas and bodhisattvas. Every offering becomes numberless, so if you know this mantra by heart, recite it and think that the whole sky is filled with offerings, mentally transformed. You actually benefit by reciting this mantra. There is unbelievable benefit and you collect so much merit on that day, at that time. There is no comparison with how much money you can make from business in the world—even a billion dollars of profit is nothing in comparison.

When you are lighting a butter lamp, a candle, or electric lights, or whatever it is, remember to generate bodhicitta motivation. Make sure it’s one hundred per cent. Dedicate the practice to achieve enlightenment for numberless sentient beings: numberless hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, human beings, suras, asuras and intermediate state beings.

I remember many years ago in the old Kopan Monastery, Lama Lhundrup was outside. He made one butter lamp offering, then prayed. He offered one light. It was perfectly done. You could feel how pure it was, the way he did it was so nice. For sure it was done with bodhicitta motivation.

The candle or butter lamp that you light is not for your happiness, but for all sentient beings to be freed from oceans of samsaric suffering, to achieve enlightenment. Offer light with that feeling and immediately offer to the root guru, for example, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, or whoever is your root guru. You collect the highest merit, much more than skies of offerings to numberless Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, numberless statues, stupas, scriptures and relics. That in itself is great, but compared to that, just by offering to the guru you have collected the highest merit. You can think: the guru is all the buddhas, Dharma, Sangha, numberless statues, stupas and scriptures.

If you have time, offer to numberless Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha in the ten directions, and numberless statues, stupas, scriptures and relics, who are the guru. Not only in this universe, but the ten directions’ Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, statues, stupas and scriptures manifesting as the guru. The second time, offer in that way. Wow, wow, wow, wow, the merits! You gain the happiness up to enlightenment not just one time but numberless times! You can’t get that from doing business, even if you make a billion dollars each hour. I have to bring up business so you understand this.

With one light, you can visualize that by the power of the mantra, it becomes numberless offerings to the buddhas and bodhisattvas. Visualize whole skies of offerings, numberless lights, mentally transformed. The mantra has the power to increase the offering, filling whole skies, numberless. When you recite the words of truth, you must mentally transform the offerings. Whole skies are filled with light, how much you have visualized, that much appears to the buddhas and bodhisattvas, that much they get. Reciting the words of truth gives this power.

Buddha has explained in the Kangyur: “Those who do not memorize and recite this mantra, are extreme fools.” Why? They have no opportunity to get the extensive benefit of the mantra.

The first benefit is that the minute you remember this Clouds of Offering mantra, it already becomes an offering to the buddhas. How many buddhas? Equalling the number of atoms of the sand grains of the River Ganges. That many number of buddhas, even if you are offering light, one tiny light, even if you are eating durian. You get the benefit of prostrating at the feet of that many numbers of buddhas.

When you chant this mantra, having made offerings—of flowers, incense, garlands, lights, ornaments, powdered incense, the different robes, umbrellas, banners, flags, seat and the monk’s seat cloth, divine dress, animals, cakes, and ornaments—you actually get the benefit of having offered to all those buddhas.

Fourth, you are freed from all the negative karmas. You get purification.

Fifth, you get all the virtue.

Six, all the buddhas and bodhisattvas see you and give breath to you. It means they help free you from the sufferings of the lower realms.

Seven, if somebody gives harm to you, it helps to stop that. If you do something wrong, the smell-eaters, suras, asuras, garudas and de gye [eight worldly protectors or devas that have to do with weather] are unhappy and cause hailstorms, showers, winds and all sorts of bad weather. They create harm. If they are happy, there’s peaceful weather. Kinnaras, mahoragas, Vajrapani and the Four Guardians will always follow and protect you; they will always guard you and when there is danger, when there is harm, they will hide you.

Eight, after death, you will be born in Amitabha’s pure land.

Nine, you get these special qualities without need for special preparation and practice, just by reciting the Clouds of Offerings mantra, whether you have made one light offering or one hundred light offerings.

Then there is the prayer [expressing the words of truth]. These clouds of offerings actually performed and mentally transformed, are all expressions of the innate awareness of the mind, expressions of the dharmakaya. These clouds of offerings equalling the sky, offer to all the gurus, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and their holy body, holy speech and holy mind. Numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas, numberless statues, stupas, scriptures, even relics, all are manifestations of the root guru. Offer to all the holy objects—statues in the shops or tsa-tsas of the Buddha that somebody is making, anywhere in the world. Make offerings to all these.

If we want happiness, if we do not want suffering, we must put effort into offering to Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.