Chapter 10Mandala Offering

There is a beautiful paradox at the heart of the Buddhist path. The great masters who have realized emptiness most deeply are also the ones who continue to practice with the most care, the most devotion, the most thoroughness. You might think that someone who has seen through the illusion of solid reality would no longer bother with acts of offering and accumulation. But the opposite is true. Knowing that relative appearances are like a dream, they still practice the two accumulations. Seeing that in the absolute there is nothing to meditate upon, they still meditate. Holding the relative and absolute as inseparable, they still apply themselves with great diligence. This is the hallmark of a truly realized being.

Why? Because the path to Buddhahood requires two things, like the two wings of a bird. Without both the accumulation of merit and the accumulation of wisdom, we simply cannot fly. It is impossible to attain the twofold purity of complete Buddhahood or to fully realize the truth of emptiness without completing these two provisions for the journey. The sutras are emphatic on this point: until one has completed the two sacred accumulations, one will never realize sacred emptiness. Innate absolute wisdom can only come as the mark of having accumulated merit and purified obscurations, and through the blessings of a realized teacher. To rely on any other means is foolish.

Even those who have genuinely realized emptiness need to sustain their progress until they arrive at perfect, complete Buddhahood. They still need to make efforts in both merit and wisdom. Tilopa, that great Lord of Yogis, spoke directly to his disciple Naropa about this, urging him to understand that until he truly realized that all interdependently arising appearances have in reality never arisen, he must never part from the two wheels of his chariot -- the two accumulations. The great yogi Virupa, in his songs of realization, made a similar point: even if you have the vast confidence of not hoping for any relative Buddhahood, never give up the great accumulation of merit. Endeavor as much as you can. And the peerless Dagpo Rinpoche, Gampopa, taught that even when your realization transcends the very notions of there being anything to accumulate or purify, you should continue still to accumulate even the smallest amounts of merit.

The Buddha, in his great compassion and with all his skill in means, taught innumerable methods by which these two accumulations can be gathered. And of all these methods, the very best is the offering of the mandala. A tantra declares that to offer to the Buddhas in all Buddhafields the entire cosmos of a billion worlds, replete with everything that could be desired, will perfect the primal wisdom of the Buddhas. The mandala offering is simple enough for any beginner to practice, yet profound enough to encompass the entire cosmography of the three-kaya Buddhafields. It is, in essence, a practice of offering everything -- the entire universe and all its splendors -- to the sources of refuge.

The Accomplishment Mandala

In this tradition, we use two separate mandalas: the accomplishment mandala and the offering mandala. The material from which the mandala base is made depends on your means. Ideally, the base would be fashioned from precious substances such as gold or silver. A medium quality base would be made from bell-metal or another fine material. At the very least, you could use a smooth flat stone or a piece of wood. Similarly, the offering piles placed on the base would ideally consist of precious stones -- turquoise, coral, sapphires, pearls. Second best would be medicinal fruits. Ordinarily, one would use grains such as barley, wheat, or rice. And at the very simplest level, you could use pebbles, gravel, or sand as a support for your visualization.

On the accomplishment mandala, you begin by arranging five piles. A small pile goes in the center to represent the Buddha Vairocana surrounded by the deities of the Buddha Family. One pile goes in the eastern direction -- that is, toward yourself -- to represent the Buddha Vajra Akshobhya surrounded by the deities of the Vajra Family. Then one in the south for Buddha Ratnasambhava and the Jewel Family, one in the west for Buddha Amitabha and the Lotus Family, and one in the north for Buddha Amoghasiddhi and the Action Family.

Another possibility is to visualize the field of merit as in the refuge practice. In this case, the central pile represents the Great Master of Oddiyana, inseparable from your own root teacher, with all the teachers of the Great Perfection lineage above him, arranged in order. The front pile represents Buddha Shakyamuni surrounded by the thousand and two Buddhas of this Good Kalpa. The pile on the right represents his eight great Close Sons surrounded by the noble sangha of Bodhisattvas. The pile on the left represents the Two Principal Shravakas surrounded by the sangha of Shravakas and Pratyekabuddhas. And the pile at the back represents the Jewel of the Dharma in the form of stacked-up books encased in a lattice of light rays.

This accomplishment mandala is placed on your altar or another suitable support, surrounded if possible by offerings, and set in front of representations of the Buddha's body, speech, and mind. If all of this is not feasible, it is also acceptable to simply visualize the field of merit without any physical mandala at all.

The Offering Mandala

Holding the offering mandala base in your left hand, you wipe it for a long time with the underside of your right wrist while reciting the Seven Branches and other prayers, never allowing yourself to become distracted from the visualization. This wiping is not merely to clean away physical dirt. It is a way of using the effort we put into this task to rid ourselves of the two obscurations that veil our minds.

The great Kadampa masters of old cleaned their mandalas with the undersides of their wrists until the skin was worn through and sores began to form. Still they carried on, using the edges of their wrists. When sores formed there too, they used the backs of their wrists instead. Such was their devotion. So when you clean the mandala base, do not use a woolen or cotton cloth, but only your wrist, following the example of these great practitioners of the past.

The Thirty-Seven Element Mandala

As you arrange the offering piles on the base, you follow the prayer known as The Thirty-Seven Element Mandala, composed by Chogyal Pakpa, the Protector of Beings of the Sakya school. This method is straightforward to practice, and has therefore been adopted by all traditions, both old and new, without distinction.

You begin by sprinkling the mandala with perfumed water while reciting the mantra of the ground. Then, taking a small pinch of grain, you circle your hand clockwise on the mandala base and place the grain in the middle, reciting the mantra of the golden fence. A larger pile goes in the center for Mount Meru, King of Mountains. Then the four continents are placed going clockwise from the east, each with two subcontinents on either side. The precious mountain goes in the east, the wish-fulfilling tree in the south, the inexhaustibly bountiful cow in the west, and the spontaneous harvest in the north. Then come the seven attributes of royalty and the vase of great treasure, placed one after another in the cardinal and intermediate directions. The four outer goddesses go in each cardinal direction, and the four inner goddesses in the intermediate directions. The sun is placed in the east, the moon in the west, the precious umbrella in the south, and the banner victorious in all directions in the north. Finally, you pile more grains on top so that no space is left unfilled, and offer it all to the glorious and sublime root and lineage teachers and to all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

The Three-Kaya Mandala Offerings

Beyond the thirty-seven element offering, this tradition also teaches the mandala offering of the three kayas according to the Heart-essence teachings of the Omniscient Longchenpa.

The Ordinary Mandala of the Nirmanakaya. The four continents with Mount Meru in the center and the realms of the Brahma heavens above -- all of this makes up one world. A thousand of those worlds make a first-order universe. Multiply that by a thousand to get a second-order universe of a million worlds. Multiply again by a thousand and you arrive at a cosmos of a billion universes -- a third-order great universal system. This is the dominion of a single manifest Buddha, such as Shakyamuni, whose Buddhafield is called The Universe of Endurance.

Now imagine throughout all of these innumerable, inconceivable worlds every exquisite treasure to be found in human or celestial realms -- the seven attributes of royalty and so on, whether owned by anyone or not. To all of that, add your own body, your wealth, your life, your good fortune, your power and strength, as well as all the sources of merit that you have accumulated throughout all time and will accumulate in the future, together with everything that could ever bring pleasure and happiness. Pile everything up -- everything that is best and most desirable -- without so much as a sesame seed of desire or attachment. Offer it all to your teacher and the deities of the nirmanakaya, complete and lacking nothing.

The Extraordinary Mandala of the Sambhogakaya. Above all of that, create in your imagination an infinity of heavenly realms and inconceivable palaces in the five great Buddhafields, all graced by the Lady of Beauty and the other goddesses offering the delights of the senses, multiplied infinitely. Offer all of this to your teacher and the deities of the sambhogakaya.

The Special Mandala of the Dharmakaya. Upon the mandala base representing unborn absolute space, place piles representing the four visions and whatever thoughts arise. Offer them to your teacher and the deities of the dharmakaya. Here, even your thoughts themselves become the offering.

For this mandala offering of the three kayas, you maintain a clear sense of all these instructions while repeating the prayer with devotion. Hold the mandala base in your left hand, and for each recitation of the text add one pile with your right hand. Practice with perseverance, holding up the mandala base until your arms ache so much they can no longer keep it up. To bear hardships and persevere courageously for the sake of the Dharma means more than simply going without food. It means always being determined to complete any practice that is difficult, whatever the circumstances. In doing so, you will acquire a tremendous amount of merit through your patience and effort.

You should make at least one hundred thousand mandala offerings in this way. Whatever form the offering takes, it is essential to apply the three supreme methods: begin by arousing bodhicitta, do the practice itself free from concepts, and seal the practice at the end with the dedication of merit.

The Quality of Our Offerings

If it is barley, wheat, or another grain that you are using, always offer fresh grain whenever you can afford to, and do not use the same grain twice. What has already been offered you can give to the birds, distribute to beggars, or pile up in front of a representation of the Three Jewels. But never think of it as your own or use it for yourself. If you truly lack the resources to renew offerings every time, you may reuse the same grain, but always clean it before offering by picking out all foreign bodies, dust, chaff, straw, and bird droppings, and saturate it with saffron or other scented water.

The ancient Kadampas had a sharp saying about this: to keep the best for yourself and offer moldy cheese and withered vegetables to the Three Jewels simply will not do. Do not take the finest barley for your own tsampa and leave the rest for offerings. Do not make tormas or lamp offerings with rancid or rotten ingredients while keeping whatever is unspoiled for your own use. That sort of conduct will deplete your merit rather than increase it.

Atisha used to say that Tibetans would never be rich because they made their torma dough too thin. He also observed that in Tibet, just to offer water was enough to accumulate tremendous merit, because the water there was so pure.

Indeed, offering clean water is an extremely effective way of accumulating merit if you can do it diligently. Clean the offering bowls and lay them out side by side -- not too close together, not too far apart, all in a straight line. The water should be clear, free from particles, and the bowls should be filled with care, full but not quite to the brim. The Prayer of Good Actions speaks of offerings arranged perfectly, distinctively, and sublimely. Whatever form of offering you make, if you make it beautiful and pleasing, even in the way it is set out, the respect you show to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas will bring a vast amount of merit.

If you lack resources entirely, there is nothing wrong with offering even something dirty or unpleasant, as long as your intention is perfectly pure. The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have no concepts of clean or dirty. There is the story of a poor woman known as Town Scavenger who offered the Buddha a butter lamp despite having almost nothing. And there is the story of a leper woman who offered a bowl of rice gruel to Mahakasyapa. As she was offering it, a fly fell in. When she tried to fish out the fly, her finger fell in too. Mahakasyapa drank it anyway in order to fulfill her good intention. Because his acceptance of her offering had provided him with a whole day's food, the leper woman was filled with such joy that she was reborn in the Heaven of the Thirty-three. In short, what matters most is that what you use should be clean, offered in a pleasing way, and your intention should be utterly pure.

Merit: The Root of All Accomplishment

At no stage of the path should you stop trying to perform practices for accumulating merit. The tantras are clear: without any merit there can be no accomplishment. One cannot make oil by pressing sand. No matter how many millions of sand grains you press, you will never extract the tiniest drop of oil. But to seek accomplishments by accumulating merit is like pressing sesame seeds -- the more seeds you press, the more oil flows. Even a single seed crushed on your fingernail will make the whole nail oily.

The temporary achievements of ordinary life are also made possible by accumulated merit. Some people, without ever having to make the slightest effort, are never short of food, money, or possessions, simply because of the stock of merit they have built up in past lives. Others spend their whole lives rushing about trying to get rich through trade, farming, and so on, and it does them not the tiniest bit of good. They end up dying of hunger. This is something anyone can observe.

There was once a hermit who had nothing to live on, so he began doing the practice of the protector Damchen. He became so accomplished in the practice that he could converse with Damchen as though with another person. Yet he still achieved no material accomplishment whatsoever. Damchen told him plainly: even the faintest effects of any past generosity were lacking in him, so the protector could not bring him any accomplishment. One day the hermit lined up with some beggars and was given a full bowl of soup. When he got home, Damchen appeared and said, "Today I granted you some accomplishment. Did you notice?" The hermit was baffled -- all the beggars had received a bowl of soup, not only him. "When you got your soup," Damchen explained, "a big lump of fat fell into your bowl. That was the accomplishment from me!" Even a powerful protector deity could only work with the tiny spark of merit that the hermit had finally generated through receiving that offering of soup.

When Atisha came to Tibet, the country was much richer and larger than it is today, and yet he said Tibet was really a kingdom of hungry ghosts: he saw no one who was reaping the fruit of having offered even a single measure of barley to a pure object. If people find everyday wealth and power so wonderful and amazing, it is a sign of how small-minded they are, how strongly attached to ordinary appearances, and how poorly they understand the proliferating effects of actions.

But anyone with sincere and heartfelt renunciation will know that none of the apparent perfections of this world -- even to be as rich as a naga, to hold a position as high as the sky, to be as powerful as a thunderbolt or as pretty as a rainbow -- has the tiniest speck of permanence, stability, or substance. To accumulate merit hoping to get rich in this life is fine for ordinary worldly people, but it is a far cry from authentic Dharma, which is based on the determination to be free from samsara.

A disciple once asked Gampopa what he should do in this degenerate age, when it is so difficult to find food, clothing, and other necessities for practice. Should he propitiate wealth deities, learn methods for extracting essences, or simply resign himself to death? The master replied that without the fruit of past generosity, propitiating wealth deities would be difficult, and seeking wealth for this life conflicts with sincere Dharma practice. But -- and this was his essential point -- if you feel certain from the depth of your heart that you can practice without caring whether you die or not, you will never lack food and clothing. The Buddha himself declared that even during a famine so extreme that a measure of flour would cost a measure of pearls, the disciples of the Buddha would never be without food and clothing.

Whatever practice you undertake, whether accumulating merit and wisdom or purifying obscurations, do it for the benefit of the whole infinity of beings, without mixing in any self-centered desires. That way, even without your wishing for it, your own interests and comfort in this life will automatically be taken care of, like smoke rising by itself when you blow on a fire, or barley shoots springing up as a matter of course when you sow grain. But abandon like poison any impulse to devote yourself to worldly attainments for their own sake.

The Kusali's Accumulation: Offering the Body

Now comes a practice called the kusali's accumulation -- a brief but profound offering of one's own body. "Kusali" means a beggar. To accumulate merit and wisdom, yogis who have renounced ordinary life -- hermits living in the mountains, for instance -- use visualization to make offerings of their own bodies, having no other possessions to offer.

Think about it: all the material things we gather around us with so much effort and concern are ultimately for the care of our bodies. Compared to any other possession, it is without doubt our bodies that we cherish most. To sever our infatuation with our own bodies and use them as an offering is therefore far more beneficial than offering any other possession. As Machik Labdron confessed: not knowing that to give away her body without attachment was to accumulate merit and wisdom, she had clung to her dear body.

In the practice itself, the essence of your mental consciousness is visualized in the form of the Wrathful Black True Mother. She is dancing, brandishing a curved knife high in the air with her right hand, holding a skull-cup full of blood at her heart with her left. As you pronounce the syllable "P'et!" she flies up through your central channel and shoots out through the aperture of Brahma at the crown of your head. At that instant, your body becomes a corpse and collapses in a heap -- but not your normal body. You see it as vast, fat, greasy, and huge, as big as the entire cosmos of a billion worlds.

With a single blow of her curved knife, the Wrathful Mother slices off the top of the corpse's skull at the level of the eyebrows to make a skull-cup as vast as the cosmos itself. She places it on a tripod of three enormous human skulls, and with the hooked knife lifts the whole corpse and puts it into the skull-cup. Fire blazes up from beneath and heats the skull-cup until the corpse sizzles and melts into nectar, which boils up and fills the entire vessel. Everything foul and impure flows off as frothing scum. Steam rises from the nectar and touches the seed syllable above, which exudes streams of red and white nectar that drip down and blend together. The syllable itself dissolves into light and melts into the nectar. By reciting "Om Ah Hum," the Om purifies the nectar of all imperfections, the Ah makes it increase many times over, and the Hum transforms it into everything that could ever be wished for -- the immaculate nectar of primal wisdom, manifesting in clouds that billow out and satisfy all possible desires.

This nectar is then offered in what are called the "feasts." In the white feast, you offer upward to the guests above: your root teacher, the lineage teachers, all the assembled Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, yidams, and Dharma protectors. They imbibe the nectar through their tongues, which have the form of hollow vajra tubes. As a result, you complete the accumulations, purify violations and breaches of samaya, and attain both the common and supreme accomplishments.

In the white feast for the guests below, the nectar rains down upon all beings throughout the six realms and the three worlds, and all beings drink it and are utterly satisfied.

Then comes the variegated feast for the guests above, where inconceivable clouds of offerings arise from the nectar -- fresh water, flowers, incense, lamps, perfume, music, auspicious symbols, attributes of royalty, parasols, victory-banners, canopies, golden wheels, and white conches spiraling to the right. All of these are offered, and as a result you and all beings complete the accumulations and are cleansed of all obscurations.

In the variegated feast for the guests below, whatever each being of the six realms desires pours down upon them like rain -- food for those who want food, clothing for those who want clothing, wealth for those who want wealth, gardens, horses, houses, friends and loved ones for those who long for them. You think particularly of those to whom you have been indebted throughout beginningless samsara -- all kinds of karmic debts from killing, robbing, harming, and all the complex obligations of existence. The offering transforms into an inexhaustible treasury of everything desirable, raining down upon these karmic creditors. When each of them has enjoyed what they wished for, you are freed from your karmic obligations, your debts are repaid, and everyone is placated and satisfied.

For all those who may have been left behind -- the lowly, the weak, the crippled, the blind, the deaf, the mute, and all beings tortured by suffering -- the offering becomes whatever they need: a refuge for the refugeless, a protector for the unprotected, medicine for the sick, life-restoring elixirs for the dying, miraculous legs for the crippled, eyes of wisdom for the blind. All beings enjoy the gifts and are satisfied, delivered from the effects of actions, sufferings, and habitual tendencies. All males reach the level of Avalokiteshvara, all females reach the level of noble Tara, and the three worlds of samsara are liberated to their very depths.

Then you rest in the state beyond any concept of an offering, an offerer, or a recipient of offerings.

The Meaning of Cho

It is vital to understand what Cho really means. The spirits to be destroyed in Cho practice are not anywhere outside. They are within us. All the hallucinations that we perceive in the form of external spirits arise because we have not eradicated the conceit of believing in an "I" and a "self." As Machik Labdron taught: the tangible demon, the intangible demon, the demon of exultation, and the demon of conceit -- all of them come down to the demon of conceit.

Jetsun Milarepa spoke to the Ogress of the Rock in these terms: belief in an "I" is more powerful than you are, demoness; concepts are more numerous than you; thoughts are more spoiled by habits than you. He classified Cho into three levels: outer Cho is to wander in fearsome places and mountain solitudes; inner Cho is to cast away one's body as food; absolute Cho is to sever the root of self-clinging once and for all.

What today's so-called Cho practitioners often mean by their practice is something quite different -- a grisly process of supposedly destroying malignant spirits through killing, slashing, chopping, beating, and chasing. Their bravado is nothing more than hatred and pride. They work themselves into a furious display of rage, staring with enormous angry eyes, clenching their fists, biting their lower lips, and grabbing at the sick person so violently they tear the clothes off their back. They call this subduing spirits, but to practice Dharma like this is totally mistaken.

Machik Labdron prophesied this very situation. She said that since time without beginning, harmful spirits have lived in a ceaseless whirl of hallucination and suffering brought on by their own evil actions and inauspicious circumstances. With the hook of compassion, she catches those evil spirits. Offering them her warm flesh and warm blood as food, through the kindness and compassion of bodhicitta she transforms the way they see everything and makes them her disciples. But, she warned, the great adepts of Cho in the future would boast of killing spirits, casting them out, and beating them -- and that would be a sign that false doctrines of Cho, the teachings of demons, were spreading.

The real meaning of Cho is to eradicate any belief in demons from within, not to kill, thrash, cast out, or destroy them externally. As Milarepa said: take a demon as a demon and it will harm you. Know a demon is in your mind and you will be free of it. Realize a demon to be empty and you will annihilate it. His system was to eradicate the belief in a self, cast the eight ordinary concerns to the winds, and make the four demons feel embarrassed. Direct all your practice inward. To say "Eat me! Take me away!" just once is a hundred times better than crying "Protect me! Save me!"

When you finally cut through at its very root all belief in the duality of aggressor and victim, perceiving as deity and perceiving as demon, self and others, and all the resulting dualistic concepts of hope and fear, attachment and hatred, good and bad, pleasure and pain -- you will find neither deity nor demon, but only the confidence of the view. Neither distraction nor fixation, but only the vital point of meditation. Neither acceptance nor rejection, but only the vital point of action. Neither hope nor fear, but only the vital point of the result. When all concepts of anything to be cut and anyone doing the cutting dissolve into the expanse of absolute reality where all things are equal, the inner harmful spirit of conceit is severed at the root. That is the sign that you have realized the absolute and ultimate Cho.