Lamps Lighting Offering

Offering butter lamps are deeply ingrained in the Tibetan tradition and sometimes as many as 10,000 are offered. Butter lamps may be offered for many occasions. Lighting butter lamps represent relief from suffering and provides you with a guiding light to find enlightenment.

The butter lamps help to focus the mind and aid meditation. According to the Root tantra of Cakrasaṃvara Tantra, "If you wish for sublime realization, offer hundreds of lights". The Pilgrims also supply lamp oil to gain merit. Externally, the lights are seen to banish darkness.

What does butter lamp symbolize? 

Light is the source of goodness and the ultimate reality, and it accompanies transcendence into the Nirvana of Buddhist doctrine. It is the sun, and it is the avenger of evil forces and darkness. Light is knowledge. Purity and morality are connected terms as well.

Butter lamps are a conspicuous feature of Tibetan Buddhist temples and monasteries throughout the Himalayas. Each morning Tibetans offer a lighted butter lamp, representing the illumination of wisdom, along with seven bowls containing pure water before the images on their household shrine.

Why do we offer light to Buddha and enlightened beings?
The act further honors the Triple Gem (the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha), deepening one's commitment to the Buddha's path. Material offerings might be imbued with the following symbology: the lighting of a candle or an oil lamp represents the light of wisdom illuminating the darkness of ignorance.

The tradition of offering lamps lighting

Since Buddha Shakyamuni attained enlightenment 2,500 years ago and dispelled the darkness of ignorance that obscures the mind’s true nature, lamp offerings in Buddhist practices have symbolized his realization. Each lamp offering celebrates the Buddha’s enlightenment and thus is associated with great good fortune.

For Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, a lamp offering also carries the wish to attain Buddhahood and the aspiration to recognize the clear light at the time of death, thereby experiencing liberation in that moment. In this way lamp offerings are associated with transitions in one’s life. Lamp offerings are best made before consecrated representations of fully awakened wisdom, loving-kindness, and compassion.

The right motivation 

Because of the association with great good fortune, lamp offerings are made for any individual or family life event that is celebrated, such as the birth of a child, the marriage of a couple, the graduation of a son or daughter, the birthday of a friend, and the anniversary of one’s parents. Lamp offerings may also be made in difficult times or uncertain transitions.

The gift of light and the accompanying prayers help to bring about less suffering and greater happiness in times of illness, loss, uncertainty, and death. Lamps may be offered for a parent who is facing an operation, for a friend changing careers, for a student facing a difficult exam, and for a family member experiencing extreme stress. At the time of someone’s death, it is traditional to offer a Bardo lamp for 49 days.

When we make light offerings, just as when we engage in any other virtuous activity, we begin by engendering the correct motivation. Therefore, we pause before we start our offerings to recall the vast attitude of bodhicitta. To inspire you, here we include a beautiful aspiration prayer by Mipham Rinpoche. 

Mipham Rinpoche

Jamgon Ju Mipham Gyatso, or Mipham Jamyang Namgyal was born in 1846 and pass away in 1912. Mipham Jamyang was a very influential philosopher and polymath of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. He wrote over 32 volumes on topics such as painting, poetics, sculpture, alchemy, medicine, logic, philosophy and tantra.

Lamp Aspiration by Mipham Rinpoche

• This illuminating lamp of original pure awareness
• I offer to the mandala deities of Vidyadhara Padmakara.
• May all beings, my mothers, wherever awareness pervades, attain the Dharmakaya level of aware emptiness.

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Aspiration For Bodhichitta

For those in whom the precious Bodhichitta has not arisen

May it arise and not decrease

But increase further and further.

Dedication of Merit

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Having defeated the enemies wrong-doings.

May we liberate migratory from the ocean of existence.

With its stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death.

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