Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 15-minute teaching, Choedak walks through the detailed meanings and intentions behind each offering made to Medicine Buddha. He explains how the eight traditional offerings transform from material objects into spiritual requests: drinking water represents asking for knowledge, washing water for freedom from pride, flowers for blossoming compassion and healing qualities, incense for strengthened inner morality, lamps for the torch of wisdom in times of darkness, perfume for unshakeable faith, food for the daily sustenance of meditation practice, and music for speech that is kind and beneficial. Choedak then guides practitioners through the full visualization sequence, the prayers of homage, and the dissolution and dedication of merit. He emphasizes that understanding the meaning behind each gesture matters more than perfect form, and briefly mentions supplementary practices on pain meditation and long-life prayers for key teachers.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 MB.mp3
UUID: 64281622-45f9-4dd2-ac5b-460a2aca9c14
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Medicine Buddha (Choedak)
Date: 2002 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~1,765
So the reason why you are doing this is you are finally about to conclude your practice and then offering this to Medicine Buddha, first with the two waters, drinking water and feet washing water. You offer the drinking water with a request as I make the offering of drinking water to you. Of course you are not thirsty, but we are. Please give us a drink of nectar in our life. So that’s the request.
We have run out of nectar. And second is feet washing water. Of course, the Buddha has no dirty feet, so what do we do? Feet washing water may we be liberated from clinging to our ignorance, meaning we don’t develop pride in our ignorance. That’s the feet washing water.
May we be able to wash our pride however much we learn. So that’s the request. And then when you offer flowers, of course flowers, you offer flowers, Please bless us to blossom qualities in us. Qualities. Qualities of kindness, qualities of compassion, qualities of healing, qualities of reconciliation, qualities of forgiveness, all those flowers.
And then when you make the, offering of incense, when you offer incense, incense is this beautiful smell. As I offer the incense, may it increase my inner morality, May I increase my, what do you call, aura of morality. Aura of morality means your good deeds of yourself that benefit others. Those who sniff you feel good about you. That you’re worthy of sniffing.
That you’re worthy of knowing, you know. Because some are not worthy of knowing. You regret they knew you. But some are worthy of knowing that may my knowing and meeting be worthwhile because I carry this pure morality of ethics. And then, lamps offering.
When you offer lamps, may I be given the torch of wisdom whenever I fall, when I meet darkness, whenever I meet forces of darkness. May I have the torch of wisdom? But don’t go out within me. Yeah? And then perfume.
Perfume is perfume, when you offer perfume, may my reservoir of faith remain strong, remain unexhausted. Reservoir of faith, may my faith always remain strong, not shallow. Particularly when you meet the difficulties, my faith becomes strong. So that’s what the perfume is. The best perfume is your faith.
However many perfumes you wear, if you don’t have real faith in yourself or confidence in yourself, the perfume wouldn’t attract that many. So your own faith, confidence will benefit more than any perfume. And the food is you offer food, may I be able to give myself a meal of meditation every day at least once, if not maybe more. Meaning that I will do this practice every day, this and the like practice every day, that’s a real sustenance of well-being really. However many burgers or food I eat, I’m always hungry, you know.
So, may I give myself real food, real food of happiness. The music, the last, may I offer music means may my speech be like music. That means no unkind words go out of your speech. That is a very final request, but a lot of requests. So don’t just do it quickly and just forget it.
Don’t just do it quickly, oh, what was the gesture?’ But if you don’t know the gesture, you wouldn’t do the gesture. But if you know the meanings, you really like to do the gesture, that means so much. Even if you didn’t know the meanings of this gesture very much, you can say those things, you remember the meanings. That’s enough. If you can do the gesture as well, so much the better.
At least the mantra is there for you, the meaning is there for you, and then feel that. You can do that not only when you are doing practice, but when you go to the temples or shrines or meet holy beings or churches or even whenever you go there, you just think of those things. It’s very good for you. Just not just take photos like Japanese. Just have an initial nice way of recognizing.
If whether you do the gestures or not, just go in there. People do go with something in their hand, flowers or something, at least something. Yeah? Yes. Drinking water.
The first one, knowledge. Knowledge. Knowledge. Yeah. Drink of knowledge.
After you finish those offerings, then you conclude with it with the with the homage. Now let’s do the offering once. Incorporate these meanings, feelings, gestures, and the mantras. So after that, you just cross your hand. Absorb all the blessings.
Just see the blessings come back. Do that again. Next, just the prayers. I pay homage to Medicine Buddha of Lapis Lazuli, victorious one who is equally compassionate to all. The mere hearing of his name removes all the sufferings of the evil world, and who clears away the disease of the three poisons.
You conclude. Yeah? May the victorious Tathagatas, the arhats, the fully perfected medicine Buddha, grand, supreme, and ordinary attain to me and all limitless Indian beings. Om vajra mu, please depart. You’re asking medicine Buddha, now you may go home.
It’s a very polite goodbye. You may go home. Om vajra, remove. You just abandon, remove. Please, please depart.
I’ll say the same soon. The wisdom aspect dissolves into emptiness. Visualize that the retinues, the seeds, dissolve into light, absorb, once in three places marked with the three syllables. Om, ah, hum. So that’s where you conclude.
Yourself remains on what we call post meditation medicine Buddha. Rest is all dissolved including the lotus and moon disc and the two bodhisattva, yourself is alone and your forehead, the throat, and heart always marked with Aum, Ah, and hum. So it’s just a direct reminder of what are you doing with your body, what are you doing with your speech, what are doing with your mind. So that’s always remembering them, remembering these three to protect. It’s like a shield to guard, to shield, or armor to wear when you go out and about.
Sometimes when you are a little bit in trouble, just think of the red eye here, white ah here, blue hum here. Just tingle feeling, tingling feeling is three, oh, then it brings back your conscience. Because otherwise it is very easy to slip off and so just keep memory to this. Om, ah, and hum. That’s why when we do Om, when you go to pray at home it goes like this, like this, like this. Nice.
Anybody. So that’s it. So we have now come to the conclusion and dedication merits which we will do and of course this text when you see here, another Healing Meditation Medicine Buddha on page nine and ten. That’s a slightly modified version that I simplified it, but you don’t need to do that. You just stick with the main practice you have done, but of course some elements of that you might find useful to incorporate from the second version, page nine and ten version, and the rest is that.
And then Meditation on Pain on page eleven, we read already this morning. This you can read in conjunction with the Medicine Buddha practice or not. Sometimes you might just carry this in pocket, you know. Carry this in pocket. I think arthritis foundation published this in one of their issues, you know.
Because sometimes when we have pain we don’t know what to do, you know. Even sometimes reading this sort of thing might bring your mind back as to what to do and how to deal with pain, you know, how to deal with pain. And then there’s numerous, if time permits, you can do the dedication or long life prayers. That’s the prayer for the long life of His Holiness Sakya Trizin, His Holiness Dalai Lama, and His Eminence Yogchen Trishul Rinpoche, all of those three photos are on the shrine there. There are teachers, not all the teachers, but some of the living teachers that are connected with these practices of Medicine Buddha.
And then if your time permits, you also do the prayer for the happiness of all living beings. So, we will first do the dedication merits here on page eight and then do those subsequent prayers. And dedication merits, I am sure you have all come here for very significant purposes to dedicate these understanding and practices for you and those around you and many sentient beings. So we will do just that by way of dedicating to fulfillment of each and every one of your visions and purposes for which you have come and ultimately for the enlightenment of all sentient beings and quickly relieving all the sufferings of the whole world. We do the dedication on page eight first. Through this virtue may I quickly attain the stage of Medicine Buddha, and establish each and every sentient being on this stage of enlightenment by recalling the name and murmuring the powerful healing mantra of healing.
King of all physicians, may those beings who encounter physical and mental sicknesses, gain strength, trouble, pain, and soothe the sufferings of others. By shunning the act of harming others as a blessing of the healing Buddha and unconditionally nursing the sick, and so may all beings emulate the compassionate acts of the bodhisattvas. So on page twelve, I’ll do that. And then from The idea of doing long life prayers at the end of your practice is you offer all your practices to the enlightened ones, to the masters as an offering. The best offering to your spiritual teachers is your practice.
This you do so by dedicating at the end of your daily practices. And since long life of the teachers are very important for the teachings to remain, only if the teachings remain then there will be what you call the hope for all sentient beings to be able to meet the teachings and find effective ways to deal with the sufferings and causes of suffering. So that’s why you conclude this. Whether your daily time permits to do this practice or not, is good to know that these prayers can be done. Sometimes just saying these prayers completely switches your mind in a very positive mood.
So, therefore, it is a very great blessing. Millions and millions of people recite this prayer, so you are not alone. The power and blessing and effect will be that much greater since it is a prayer said by many, that many sentient beings. Okay, so we’ll do that.