The Six Perfections - Mandala Offerings.

Mandala Offerings (General information only)

It’s important for us to understand the general information and of what Mandala offering is about.

The Mandala offering is an extremely powerful method for accumulating extensive merit and receiving realizations such as Bodhicitta and emptiness quickly. 

Just as great strength is needed to carry a heavy load, a great amount of merit is needed to lead all sentient beings to enlightenment. There's nothing that can be offered with your hands that is more meritorious than offering Mandalas.

The Tibetan word for Mandala is "Khyil-khor" literally means "taking the essence." The essence you take is the whole path from guru devotion to enlightenment. Therefore, by doing this practice you receive inconceivable temporal and ultimate happiness.

Mandala Offerings and the Six Perfections
Offering the Mandala contains the practice of all six perfections. By cleaning and blessing the Mandala base with liquid mixed with a bajung pill you practice the perfection of giving (water symbolizes prosperity). 

Checking the grain for insects and looking after the base, keeping it clean, leads to the perfection of moral conduct. Removing insects from the grain without harming those leads to the perfection of patience.

Thinking of how fortunate you are to be able to practice Dharma and making the offering with joy, you cultivate joyous effort. By not forgetting the visualization, you attain concentration. By clearly visualizing the colors and objects in the Mandala, and by meditating on its emptiness, wisdom is attained. 

Therefore, offering Mandalas helps you to quickly complete the two accumulations of the ordinary merits and primordial wisdom as it contains all six perfections.

This practice pacifies all hindrances to your temporal and ultimate happiness and cutting the root of attachment  or desire. The purpose or actual practice of generosity is not having a stingy mind or mind full of desire. When we give up all attachments to external material belongings , then that is generosity. 

When we have that kind of practice of generosity, then we have the accumulation of merit. These depend on merit and merit depends on offerings. The most meritorious object to offer is the Mandala. Therefore, if you wish to achieve temporal and ultimate happiness, the best thing you can do is to offer many Mandalas.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Practice?

Basically, offering the Mandala involves mentally offering the entire universe: all the planets and worlds, all sense objects, and especially the objects to which there is much clinging, such as your body, possessions and friends. All these are offered in the merit field. 

The essential technique of offering is to offer the best quality materials, in greater quantity and to have as clear a visualization as possible. In this way you can create extensive merit in just a short time.

By visualizing and then offering whatever you need in the space above the Mandala, you create the cause to receive it. Visualizing anything golden and offering it to the Buddhas frees you from disease, and offering the moon create the cause for you to be reborn as a god or a holy being. Offering jewels, gold and enjoyments creates the cause to be reborn in the caste of kings. As Mandala offerings are of great consequence, you should offer the finest materials you can afford. 

By visualizing the offerings as more precious and extensive, you create vast merits. For example, imagining that you're offering a Mount Meru of silver, lapis lazuli, and ruby and gold, even if there are no such materials on your base, you receive the merit of actually offering them. So in just a few seconds, it's possible to create the merit of having offered the entire universe.

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*Footnote

Please consult your Guru or a qualified Lama or teacher for any Vajrayana preliminary practices! Should a devotee even want to start studying and contemplating the Vajrayana practice, then it is truly necessary to first have completed the preliminaries and to be certain and sure that bodhicitta has arisen and developed in one’s mind. 

It is absolutely necessary to have the pure motivation and to know that the Vajrayana tantric practice is not carried out to increase one’s own power and profit. Negative intentions of any kind may not be.

Thank you for reading and may you find peace and great bliss. With your support it helps spread the Buddha’s precious teachings and turning the Dharma wheels in the world. 

Aspiration For Bodhichitta

May the precious Bodhichitta arise

Where it has not arisen

And where it has arisen may it not decrease

But increase further and further.

Nagarjuna's Dedication of Merit

By this merit may we obtain omniscience then.

Having defeated the enemies wrong-doings.

May we liberate migrators from the ocean of existence.With its stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death.

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