Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 66-minute session, Kyabje Rinpoche provides detailed technical instruction on the offering section of Lama Chöpa, the guru yoga practice at the heart of Tibetan Buddhism. Rather than covering the entire ritual, he focuses on the five sensory offerings—flowers, incense, light, scented water, and food—explaining precise visualizations and hand mudras. He breaks down the 108 flavors in food offering by combining six basic tastes in three intensities. He covers the mandala offering at length: the four types and their geometric forms (circular for peaceful, square for nourishing, cape-shaped for powerful, triangular for wrathful), colors, and materials for practitioners of different means—from precious metals to rice, wheat, or stone. He illustrates with Tsongkhapa, who practiced mandala offering on a flat stone worn smooth by years of practice despite poverty. For intermediate practitioners initiated in Guru Puja.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1992-09-04 – 13A – KR.mp3
UUID: 6a2308f1-8d05-4f59-9b62-45c729a83b6c
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Guru Puja – Lama Chopa
Date: 1992-09-04
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~2,049
For the sake of myself and all living beings, in order to achieve the state of Vajradhāra in as quickly a time as possible, I will practice the essence of the universal vehicle by means of listening, reflecting and then then meditating in order to achieve the state of Vajradhāra. So we’re offering the seven-limb prayer and the first limb of which is the offering of homage or prostration and we’ve completed that. Now comes the section on the making of offerings and we’re offering first the Argham Padyam Pushpe So so now we’re going to offer So then they’re making of the five offerings of pushpe, which is flowers, dupe, which is incense, which is light, food, and which is sound. So in the space before you is Lama Losang Tenzin Dorje Chang surrounded by all of the various deities and then oneself here in aspect of with consort emitting goddesses from one’s heart. As we So as it says in verse 25, beautiful flowers and trees and blossoms and bouquets and garments exquisitely arranged fill the earth in the sky.
So here in making offerings of flowers, this is as explained in Vajrayoginī commentary where the offering goddesses are emitted, and the offering goddesses themselves are extremely beautiful. Just to see them produces bliss, and these are emitted from one’s heart, and they are offering, they are carrying precious containers, in this case, and they have four faces, jeweled containers, filled with flowers, all types of flowers, not only just single flowers, but the blossoms of trees, they are scattered they are scattering petals here and there, they are carrying garlands of flowers made up of multicolored arrangements of blue, red, yellow, white flowers, just as ways of example. Extremely it’s all extremely beautiful, and and the they garland the crowns, they place flowers upon the crowns of all the deities in the field, they place the garlands around them, even the space is garland around them. So it’s unimaginable, all of the various flowers. And really by the Lama Losang Tenzin Dorje Chang, and the various deities, really by seeing these these deities offering goddesses generate bliss, and then the having made the offerings and the goddesses are retracted into the heart and we should we should meditate that that the three spheres are empty of natural existence, that is to say agent of offering, the objects offered to, and the offerings themselves are all empty of natural existence and thereby generate the wisdom of nondual bliss emptiness.
So if you if you watch, so emitting making the offering. The flower, and then retracting the goddess. Emitting the goddess and the mudrā. So then the second offering which is of which is the offering of incense, and this is mentioned in verse 26. It says heavens billow with blue summer clouds of lapis lazuli smoke from sweet smelling incense.
So the offering goddesses are emitted, and there’s two verses, two lines. So there’s two lines, making verse 26. And offering goddesses are emitted carrying fragrant incense, and this fragrant incense produces clouds a blue smoke, the color of lapis lazuli or vaidurya, and it fills all of the space with like clouds during the monsoon, and these clouds are in various types of shapes like victory banners, Dharma wheels, flowers, they form all of these various shapes. And merely to see these clouds, these incense brings one bliss. Is the Mudra for the offering of light, Aloke.
So this is the offering of light is by it is meant to especially the butter lamps, it is mentioned in verse 27, lights from suns and moons glittering jewels and thousands of flaming lamps frolicking joyfully dispel the darkness of a thousand million worlds. So not only are we offering various lamps, but also the lights of the sun, the moon, and the radiating of precious jewels. And these inter the rays intersecting one another form images of victory banners and Dharma wheels in space. So then the next offering is that of waters or scented waters. And this is verse 28.
This is vast seas of scented waters imbued with the fragrances of saffron, sandalwood, and camphor swirl up to the horizons. So emitting immeasurable goddesses from one’s heart carrying precious large vessels filled with water which has been scented with various aromatic medicines such as saffron, it says saffron, sandalwood and camphor. And these the the fragrant waters are applied to the heart area of the deities. This is the offering for the offering of food. So this is the offering of food in Naividya is contained within verse 29, where it says delicacies of gods and men drink and savories and feasts with ingredients of a 100 flavors of the taste of which So again, emitting the offering goddesses and the carrying precious precious platters filled with various types of foods, breads, ritual cakes, these delicacies have hundreds of have a 100 flavors, fruits, drinks, all with the taste of nectar, the merely the sight of which brings one bliss.
Flavors here. We can actually list a 108 flavors, and I don’t know if I have all these words right, but there’s there are six basic flavors. There’s sweet, sour, in general there’s six flavored. There’s sweet, sour, bitter, hot, astringent, salty. That’s six of them.
So each of those can be combined with the other, making combination of 36 possibilities. And then each of those has a varying degree of lesser, like for example in the case of sweetness, lightly sweet, mildly sweet, very sweet. So that would be three times of each of those making 108. So the first is sweet. For example, the sweet could be combined with each of these six flavors, so you’d have sweet sweet, sweet sour, sweet bitter, sweet hot, sweet astringent, sweet salty.
So that would be six, and then again sour could be combined, and then you’d have sour sweet, sour sour, sour bitter, sour hot, sour I think. So this is the offering for sound, emitting the goddess. And then finish where you retract the goddess. This is the offering of sound and it’s contained in verse 30 where it says, music from in its varieties of various instruments blends into a symphony filling the three realms. So this is offering of or of sound which is in the forms of music played by a varieties of musical instruments such as drums, horns, and bells, bringing forth a symphony of of sounds, the mere hearing of which it brings uncontaminated bliss.
Okay, then next comes the offering of desirable objects, objects of desire, and what here it means is objects of desirable quality. There are three realms. There’s the desire realm, and the form realm, and the formless realm. Here we’re talking about those qualities of the desire realm. So the those objects, the offering objects which are the quality of desire, the quality of desire, that’s the quality of desire.
For example, such objects as visible form, sounds, smells, tastes, and objects of touch. So this is the object. Of visible. So one is offering a mirror which is able to reflect all forms. So this is the offering of visible form.
So you’re holding a mirror. It’s got a little handle. So these reflections of all possible forms are offered to Lama Losang Tenzin Dorje Chang and the retinue, and the mere sight of the reflected forms brings the experience of bliss. Then the next is the offering of sound. And the the emit emitting the Vajra goddess of sound.
They are carrying various musical instruments as we’ve talked about, as we mentioned before such as horns, like a string instrument, drums, and the mere hearing of these sounds brings great bliss. So then the the odors or smell. And here the fragrant, the scented liquid is contained within a shell. Then the offering of which is the offering of food, but you’re offering of flavor which is in the form of food. Offering objects of touch, the form of a cloth.
Object of touch. It is a quite detailed extensive offering. Take a year or two. Take a few years. Now next comes the offering of the mandala.
General there are four types of external, internal, secret, and suchness. And the the mandala of pacification, of control, nourishment and wrath. Of So generally, we offer the mandala of pacification or peace. That’s the shape of a peaceful mandala. A peaceful mandala is circular in shape, mandala for — what is the word in translation?
Expansion or nourishment? What do you usually translate that? Nurturing. Nurturing? Is square.
The base And then then the mandala for power, what do I call it, control or power power is what you there you go. I don’t know. What do you call that shape? It’s a cape shape.
A cape that you put around you. Yeah. It’s it has the same name as a cape. And then a wrathful mandala is triangular. And then the colors, a peaceful mandala is white.
A mandala of nourishment. Our expansiveness sometimes is yellow. Power is red. Wrath is black. So that covers the shapes and the colors of the mandala, but the substance from which they are made, can be for example for those who have, are well off, can have a mandalas can be made out of gold or silver.
For those who aren’t so well off, they can make theirs can be made out of copper or iron, and for those who aren’t even that well off, they can have mandala out of wood or stone. And then the substance from which the mandala is being the the finest could be various precious jewels and not having those then you can make use of rice, clean rice and wheat. Not having those then you can use stones, pebbles. So the great yogis and siddhas, such as etcetera, they had no money, and when they offered mandala they would use flat stone as a mandala base. But it is said that if in fact you have money, then it’s not proper to use such a type of base, that you don’t accumulate the collection by using such a base if in fact you have money.
Though Tsongkhapa was a great master, if he had he had a circle about him of eight disciples, and if they pulled all their money together, they would only have had 7 coins or what is called seven, say, seven sho, which is very little. They only had $7, like, dollars total. Some people think that is extremely rich, but that’s not the case. It’s because he was a great master. People think, well, he must have been also rich, but that’s not the case.
And he used a mandala base of a large stone and in rubbing it he wore his arm down to where it bled. So it wasn’t that he bled, it was just like some people they do a certain type of work and they they get calluses on their hands, so his arm was calloused from rubbing the stone. So in terms of offering the peaceful mandala, the mandala pacification, know, using a base of some metal, for example of gold, and we can offer a mandala of, for example, a 37 heaps. This was a tradition set out by a great Sakya Lama by the name of He was a he was a previous great master in Tibet. And but according to the tradition of Tsongkhapa there were thirty thirty three heaps?
I’m sorry. 23 heaps, 23 heaps. And this is according to the explanation of the Pandita Naropa. This is the that’s the next verse, which is 32. That’s about the offering of the mandala where it says, to you, O refuge, protectors, treasures of compassion, eminent and supreme fields of merit, present with pure faith Mount Meru in the four continents a billion times over, the seven precious royal emblems, the precious jewels and assemblies in more perfectly delightful environments than those dwelling within and the grand treasure of all wishes and wealth of gods and men.
So this requires extensive explanation, I think we’ll stop here. But