Buddhism Offerings

Altar Offerings

In every Bhutanese home, a place is reserved to make offerings to the Three Jewels, the Buddha, Dharma and Spiritual Community. The Three Jewels are often represented by a statue or thanka painting, a scripture and a stupa or a reliquary object. Before them is space to set up a set of standard offerings, represented by bowls of water, and the occasional torma ritual cake or other offerings of food. The water in the bowls would be changed every morning. For a practitioner, such offerings provide a basis for transformation into unsurpassable offerings.

According to the Buddhist scriptures, all the faults in the universe are the result of sentient beings’ disturbing emotions. Instead of dwelling on the faults to be seen in our offerings, but imagining them as pure and faultless, we create an imprint for purifying our minds of obstruction and defilement. Therefore they are imagined as pure and beautiful as possible, incorporating the best of everything existing in the past, present and future and the ten directions of the universe. The exalted beings to whom we make offerings do not apparently consume the physical substances before us. Nevertheless, as a basis for acquiring merit, such physical offerings should be clean, made of the best substances, attractive to ourselves and acquired through honest means. Consequently, they will form a better basis for imagining perfect offerings.

When preparing to make offerings, we should begin by meditating on the wisdom of great bliss and emptiness, imagining it has taken the form of the offering. When making the offering, we should think of it as empty of intrinsic existence. 1n this way, we purify the offering of its ordinary aspects and also purify our minds. We should abandon any thought of immediate benefit, especially in relation to ourselves in this life. It is also important not to entertain doubts about the quality of our offering and whether or not it pleased the exalted being to whom we presented it. Instead think that the deity’ rejoiced at the offering and generated great bliss from partaking of it.

Seven Water Bowl Offerings

The traditional set of offerings, commonly represented by bowls of water, derives from the customary offerings presented to an honoured guest in ancient India. The first bowl contains clear water for the newly arrived guests to drink. The water should be imagined as pure as nectar and offered in vessels made of precious substances. In the second bowl is water for the guest to wash his or her feet; a reminder that in India people walked barefoot. In the third bowl are flowers, reminiscent of the crowns of flowers offered to women and the garlands offered to men. Masses of fragrant, beautiful flowers can be called up in the imagination. In the fourth bowl is incense, an offering to please the sense of smell. In the imagination billowing clouds of fragrant incense are offered. The fifth offering, pleasing to sight, is bright light commonly in the form of a lamp, which like the sun and the moon illuminates darkness. This light is imagined to be so clear that you can see even the smallest atoms without obstruction. Sometimes coloured lights are offered and imagined to be emanating from nectar. In Bhutanese tradition different colours are believed to have various healing properties. Coloured or not, the light offered should be very clear. Light is imagined as dispelling the darkness of ignorance. Shariputra, the Buddha’s main disciple renowned for his intelligence, had, in a previous life, offered a bright light before a stupa. As a result he was reborn with great intelligence. The sixth offering consists of a bowl of scented water. Intended to soothe the mind, it is applied at the heart. Seventh is an offering of food, commonly in the form of a torma or ritual cake. In India, this offering traditionally contained three sweet substances: molasses, honey and sugar and three white substances: curd, butter and milk. In Bhutan, these would be mixed with tsampa or parched barley flour to make an offering cake. The result is like ambrosia, pleasing in colour, form, smell, and taste. Eighth is an offering of sound. It is not represented on the altar, but can simply be imagined as beautiful music.

INCENSE OFFERING

Incense offering, or Sang-sol, is a ceremony performed by Bhutanese from all walks of life to mark important events in their lives. A widespread national custom, it can be preformed individually or in groups, on occasions such as the annual ceremony, festivals and also at big mountain pass or preceding other important events.

Origins

It is not clear whether the Bhutanese custom of offering incense originated in India or not, as only two references to such practice can be found in the Indian texts. It is mentioned in the Guhyasamaja Tantra that one should know about the three kinds of fragrance. The other reference is to be found in the story of Bhadri of Magadha, which tells of how she invited the Buddha to her house and made offerings of smoke to him from the roof.

According to the writings of various scholars, it seems that incense offering was carried out in Bhutan from the very early times when the teacher Tonpa Sherab, founder of the Bon religion, first came from Zhang Zhung (Afghanistan/Tadzhikistan?) to spread his doctrine in Bhutan.
The oldest extant text on incense offering, dates back to the eight century, when the Indian master Padmasambhava came to Bhutan and built Samye monastery. This manual, containing detailed instructions on how to preform the ritual, was then hidden by him to await discovery at some appropriate juncture in the future. Several centuries later, two Treasure masters (tertons), one from northern Tibet and another from the south, discovered and revealed it. based on this Treasure (terma) text many Nyingma, Kagyu and Sakya lamas composed the incense offering.

The Ritual

The Incense offering should be done in the morning on a clean and elevated outdoor site, free of insects., either on a hill or the top of a house and inhabited by many local gods and nagas. If performed during a festival, all the inhabitants of a locality may assemble and, at the end of the offering, stand in a row and throw a handful of tsampa (roasted barley flour) in the air. As this is usually a happy occasion, a dance often follows. In the summer, incense offering is often associated with picnics on top of mountains.

It is closely linked with the hanging of prayer flags from trees or tall poles, especially on the third day of the new year, but also on other auspicious days. The incense should be burned in a large urn-shaped burner (sang-khun) and should not have been trampled by people or animals. Wood, not coal, should be used as fuel and the substance to be burned as incense should be fragrant, such as the leaves of fern or juniper, or the branches of coniferous tree, rhododendron, and red or white sandalwood. In addition, tsampa, butter, sugar, and medicinal plants, and other substances free from the taint of alcohol, onion or garlic are burned.
When offering incense, people should examine their motivation andreflect that by making this offering to lamas, meditational deities and religious protectors, they will accumulate merit, which they should dedicate to the benefit of all sentient beings. If they have any specific requests, such as prayers for longevity or the removal ofobstacles to religious practice, they should be made at this point.

Prayers Flags

Next the practitioners take refuge, meditate on the four immeasurable wishes, love, compassion, joy, equanimity, and visualize themselves
as deities.

Lord Buddha

Medicinal Buddha

SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA’S LIFE STORY
Prince Siddharta Gautama was born some 2,500 years ago as a prince in what is now called Lumbini in Nepal. At his birth, many special signs appeared. His father asked a sage living in his kingdom for advice on his son. The sage predicted that Gautama would become either a great King or a great spiritual teacher.
The King wanted his son to be his successor and tried to keep him far away from all matters of life that could incline him to a spiritual life. Gautama usually spent his life in his father’s palace, surrounded by all the possible luxuries of the time. He proved to be a special child, being quite intelligent as well as an excellent sportsman. He married to a beautiful woman he loved, and they had a son.
When Gautama was 29 years old, he discovered there was much suffering in the world around him. Traditionally it is explained that he suddenly recognised the problems of sickness, old age and death when visiting the city. Being shocked by the suffering of all living beings, he decided to search for way to end it. He left his wife and child, the palace and even his royal clothes, and started out on a spiritual quest.
Gautama studied under various teachers and followed their practices until he mastered them all. His first teacher was Alara Kalama who taught a form of meditation leading to an exalted form of absorption called “the state of no-thingness”, a state without moral or cognitive dimension. Gautama saw this was not going to solve suffering, and continued his search.
The next teacher was Udraka Ramaputra who taught him meditative absorption leading to “the state of neither perception nor non-perception�?. Again, Gautama realised this was not the state he was looking for. (Both Alara and Udraka are by some scholars considered to be Jain followers.)
Next, he tried extreme ascetic practices at Uruvilva in North India, with five other ascetics who turned into his followers. In the end, Gautama nearly died of starvation.
After about six years of searching, he realised that just wearing down his body did not generate new insights, but rather leads to weakness and self-destruction. When he decided to give up extreme asceticism, his five students left him.
He then sat down in a place now called Bodhgaya (North India) under a Bodhi-tree and decided not to get up anymore until he discovered the truth. Just a short time later, he became a fully enlightened Buddha. This means that he actualised all positive potentials of a sentient being and rid himself of all negative qualities. With this, he realised the true nature of existence and suffering (emptiness), and how suffering can be ended. (On the right is a descendant of the original Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya.)
Seven weeks after enlightenment, the Buddha gave his first discourse in Sarnath, near Varanasi (see image below right). Here he taught the 4 Noble Truths. The Buddha continued to teach during his life, until passing away at the age of 81.
The Buddha once summarised his entire teachings in one sentence:
“I teach about suffering and the way to end it”.
The main disciples of the Buddha are also known as the Great Arhants: Shariputra, known for his understanding of the Abidharma teachings; Maudgalyayana, known for his psychic powers; Mahakashyapa, the great ascetic; and Ananda, the personal attendant of the Buddha who recalled every word the Buddha spoke.
The Buddha’s life is also sometimes summarized in the so called ‘Twelve Deeds of the Buddha’.

Culture and Religion

Cradled in the folds of the Himalayas, Bhutan has relied on its geographic isolation to protect itself from outside cultural influences. A sparsely populated country bordered by India to the south and China to the north, Bhutan has long maintained a policy of strict isolationism, both culturally and economically, with the goal of preserving its cultural heritage and independence. Only in the last decades of the 20th century were foreigners allowed to visit the country, and only then in limited numbers. In this way, Bhutan has successfully preserved many aspects of a culture which dates directly back to the mid-17th century.

Bhutanese culture derives from ancient Tibetan culture. Dzongkha and Sharchop, the principal Bhutanese languages, are closely related to Tibetan, and Bhutanese monks read and write the ancient variant of the Tibetan language known as chhokey. Bhutanese are physically similar to the Tibetans but history does not record when they crossed over the Himalayas and settled in the south-draining valleys of Bhutan. Both Tibetans and Bhutanese revere the tantric Guru Padmasambhava the founder of Himalayan Buddhism in the 8th century.

Religion - Tantric Buddhism

Bhutanese society is centered around the practice of Tantric Buddhism. Religious beliefs are evidenced in all aspects of life. Prayer flags flutter on hillsides offering up prayers to benefit all nearby sentient beings. Houses each fly a small white flag on the roof indicating the owner has made his offering payments to appease the local god. Each valley or district is dominated by a huge dzong, or high-walled fortresses, which serves the religious and administrative center of the district.