Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A student’s question about whether offerings must be personally delivered opens this 12-minute exchange. Geshe Pema Tsering clarifies that the Buddhas always comprehend sincere offering motivation, so physical delivery matters less than the mind behind the act. He notes a practical gradient: presenting offerings in person — to a teacher or at one’s own altar — yields more merit than purely mental giving, yet mental offerings still accumulate virtue. He then addresses a subtle ethical point: intending to give but not following through is not itself a non-virtue, though it signals avarice; taking back an already-made offering would be. If attachment to an object is noticed beforehand, it is better not to offer it, since regret would undercut the merit. Aimed at students working through Śāntideva’s second chapter on offerings and confession.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 Guide.mp3
UUID: b59eb2c0-4509-4465-b014-a227b344dcd6
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life 2002 Month 01-03 (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 11.7 minutes
Words: ~752
One shouldn’t be too concerned about this if one is not able to be there when the offering is made and so on. Because, especially, the Buddhas in the universe are always available for making offerings. They’re always, in a sense, there, and they understand when offerings are being made. So we don’t have to be concerned ourselves whether a particular offering actually reaches its destination or not. Having the motivation to offer is as if the Buddhas are there just waiting for the offering to be made, waiting for us to think about making an offering.
And when when we do that, then that’s comprehended by the Buddhas themselves. So we should think more along those lines than be too concerned about the actual, you know, whether the messenger taking the offering is gonna get there or not with it or what state of mind are they gonna be in when they get there or not. It really depends on one’s own mind when one makes the offering, and this is comprehended. Did it mention that you if you’re gonna make an offering, you have to offer it yourself? Or It was it was very general, so in my mind, it was was And what you thought that it it said that you had to actually make the offering yourself?
Here, in fact, for instance, if one has one’s teacher is nearby, it there is more benefit if one actually goes there and makes the offering oneself. There is some more benefit in doing it that way in general. That is if they’re there in person than They just simply sit in one’s room and make an offering like that, or in fact, to go there. There’s more benefit to go there and make the actual offer. Also that, you know, one has one’s own altar and statues and so forth.
One can make an offering to the, you know, to the the images that one has of one’s statue on one’s altar directly like that. When one offers in that way, there can be a great benefit in making a personal offering in that way. The actual chapter itself is called confessing negativity, but it also includes making offerings. So that occurs in the very beginning of the second chapter, making offerings.
Then after that, it comes confessing negativities. Yeah. Yeah. It is called the, in Tibetan, it’s or the chapter on confessing negativities. Is that okay?
Yes. I thought I was gonna have a understanding that if you have to Okay. You have the thought to make an offering, and you don’t you don’t actually make the offering. It’s a negative. Actually, having a desire to give in initially, but then not carrying that out, there’s no special negativity that arise from something like that, although it does it perhaps indicates a certain avarice.
In Tibetan avarice is that we don’t want to let go of what we have. And it’s different from actually if we made the offering and then took it back, That would certainly be a non virtuous thing to do. But simply having a thought to give but then not carrying it through is not the same. It’s not, you know, a negative action like it would be to take the offering back, but it would indicate that there’s a certain amount of avarice. Yeah.
That’s true. If one has, like, avarice towards a particular object, one is too attached to it. One has a thought to give it, and then one realizes one is attached to it, then it’s probably better not to offer it for that reason that if one regrets making the offering, then it’s not virtuous. But, certainly, the generation of avarice or attachment to the object is nonvirtuous as well. Yes.
Yes. So therefore, if one notices that one has a bit of attachment towards the object before one is about to give it, then it’s probably better not to give it and avoid that non virtue. But then, also, we shouldn’t be too worried by this point even though we have certain amount of attachment because when offering, we don’t have to actually make the offering, you know, physically make the offering either in order to gain the merit of making an offering. So this we need to keep in mind.
We can accumulate merit in that way through making offerings without having this sort of ownership of the object.