Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Margaret McAndrew provides practical instruction on setting up altars and making water bowl offerings. In this 32-minute talk, she addresses immediate obstacles: family members opposed to Buddhist images in the home, altar space limitations, and maintaining practice while traveling. She then guides listeners through water bowl offerings in detail—spacing bowls precisely (a barley grain apart), pouring technique (thin at the start and end, thicker in the middle to avoid splashing), and proper water fill levels. She emphasizes these are meaningful meditative practices, not empty ritual, and that mindfulness and sincere devotion matter far more than expensive offerings. She illustrates this through Bodhisattva Samantabhādra, whose vast emanated offerings accumulated immense merit. Pitched at practitioners already engaged in daily Buddhist meditation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 P P P 1998 03 14.mp3
UUID: b8f46910-3c51-419d-8526-4c385283e788
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Prayers, Prostrations and Preliminaries (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1998-03-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 31.6 minutes
Words: ~4,640
On the actual that’s how to feel because I felt so disappointed that I felt like I’ve taken care of that. And then, yes, below then below that, I’ve got my offering the next night. Well, it’s lockdown. The only I’ve got a couple of elective flights which are rather beautiful when I was there for in Taiwan. And if if space is elsewhere, and then you can like canvas and things on there too.
So everybody works it out for themselves and had some sort of arrangement. And sometimes I think I might get a table that I can put in front of this over, and then I’ll be able to lay out more bowls and candles and move on it. If I ever do a retreat, I’ll have to do that because some retreats require you to have, say, three rows of water bowls. And on my present altar, there’s no way I can do more than one row of water bowls. And then I have various other little options there, like inspectors, and I gave most of them away.
But this one, I thought I particularly identified with because he was eating a bowl of rice. And so I I I sort of happy with my naivedya offering, my food offering. And sometimes when when I have something nice to offer, like a nice piece of fruit or something or some nice leaf or something, I put them in the naivedya bowl, and I put them for lunch back a bit. And then if I haven’t got any nice fresh fruit or anything to offer, then I bring him for and put him with instead of a a bowl there. So you can be quite creative, actually.
And I have a little tortoise with a gold ring around his neck for the and he’s giving a Dharma teaching to two frogs. So, talking too much. So I think after lunch, we’ll get on to actually doing the the actual water bowl. Bowl. So I don’t know whether anybody here might have family problems with members of family who are a little bit perhaps negative about the idea of having a Buddha statue in the house.
I know some people do have this problem. Maybe nobody here has. And they feel that they can’t actually set up an altar with Buddhist statues and so on. And what you can do in that case is just have a little quiet place where you that meditation, sort of quiet space for yourself and set up a little table there and just have put a a little vase of flowers and one or two other beautiful things, maybe some crystals or whatever you think is beautiful. And you can visualize that the other offerings are there and that the merit field that you can visualize the merit field and all the other different things that would normally be on an altar.
And by keeping your space there, it’s just the same as having a normal altar. And when you’re traveling, you can carry just the tiny little Buddha statue or a little picture of Buddha with you, and this can serve as your altar. And you can just, if you like, carry a little bit of incense and a small candle with you. And some people carry they have some tiny bowls that they carry with them if they want to make water bowl offerings. If you carry incense, it’s also a good idea to carry a holder for the incense because you find it always impossible to find that you just stand the incense up in.
And and in this way, you can always set up your altar wherever you go, and this is very important when you’re doing your meditation. It it just helps you to set up your altar to have it it helps you to get into the space for meditation. And you can put a little just a nice little pocket to put all these things out on, and it doesn’t take up much space and it’s light, and it means it can always have somewhere that feels special, that feels sacred, and that helps you to get into meditation. That’s why these things are important. And at home, it’s good to have an altar if you can or to at least have a special little space for meditation.
Because by doing your meditation in the same space all the time, it builds up a vibration there and you form an association with that spot so that when you go and sit there, it makes you feel that you’re sitting down to a spiritual practice. You immediately just by being near that space have that some sort of feeling. Your mind just becomes a little bit calm, then you feel like you feel quiet and you feel like this is a a meditation spot. This is a place for calming the mind. This is why we do these things.
Everything is done for a reason. It’s all it’s not just some sort of ritual or superstition with no meaning. It’s it’s practical. So when we have these things set up, we should set them in a place where we won’t have to put our feet towards them. It’s that way.
And we shouldn’t put Dharma texts down on the floor. Books are the worst thing because we can leave our Buddha statues on our shelf, but we’re always doing things with our books, so we have to be very mindful. We shouldn’t even put the Buddha statue on top of the book. If you have to carry a Buddha statue and a book around at the same time, you shouldn’t do it by putting the statue on top of the book. We shouldn’t put our and things on top of our books.
Sometimes, you know, I think it’s different if you do it like if you’re in a breeze and the pages are blowing open all the time. The only way you can read the dharma book is to treating the book as if it was just an object of no importance. And it’s actually said we shouldn’t put our books down on cushions without a cover. I think with these books here that we use, the books have a cover that sort of protects the daily pages pages from the cushion. So that’s different.
But because we sit on the cushions, that kind of makes the cushions a sort of object of look somewhat disrespectful. And so, actually, we should always put the books in the highest places. And you see that the Tibetans often, share respect to their books and their texts and so on by actually touching them to their foreheads. And if they particularly if they happen to drop a book or in some way do something that’s a bit disrespectful to it accidentally or sort of thing, then they touch it to their forehead as a sort of apology or something like that. So I’m going into this in a lot of detail because I think it’s important.
These things are very helpful for our mind. It’s important to in the west, tend not to have much of an idea of these things, and it it takes a little bit of us getting used to this idea of keeping these things with with respect. But when you do do it, you really get the rewards because you it’s what you put into your practice that you get back from it. So it’s it’s nearly lunchtime now. I think that’s enough for now.
And I think we’ll yeah. I think we’ll just dedicate our merits and come back at one thirty. Because that’s really that that concludes the section of explaining the the benefits of cleaning your room and arranging your altar. Living on maybe some of the with obtaining materials for offerings, but there’s a whole lot of this about how much enough to use up and to back up by dropping big hints and that kind of thing. You know?
It’s alright to ask to be straightforward, but to to sort of go about an devious way trying to get people to do the things isn’t suitable. So if you want to find out more about that anyway, you can check up in the Lam Rim. So we should offer the best materials, not things that we don’t think are good enough for ourselves. And if we’re too poor to be able to afford offering substances, and we shouldn’t worry because there’s many other different kinds of offerings that we can make. We can offer bowls of water and visualize that the the bowls of all the different things that we would like to be offering.
We have these things, and in fact, even if we can afford to make some material offerings, we should make visualized offerings as well because we can make much greater offerings with visualization. Mind. It’s training the mind in visualizing and in concentration and in accumulating merit by making these vast vast offerings. So all our food and drink should be offered first of the Three Jewels before we eat it. And this doesn’t mean we have to put it on the altar, but just that we should recite the mantra ourselves.
We should bless the food with the mantra on our hand three times and then offer the prayer mentally to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. And there are various different verses that we can use, such as the one in the book. So, anyway, makes the point that faith is the the main factor in making offerings, not the things that you offer. So it’s it’s having the devotion and the the faith in in the fact that we are actually making these offerings to the holy beings. So it it’s very important for us to make offerings as a support to our practice, and this is shown by the the practice of the Bodhisattva Samantabhādra.
You might have heard of the offering prayer of Samantabhādra. It’s I’m not sure whether it’s in this book. Perhaps somebody could tell me. It’s one that we usually make particularly before the precept ceremony. Page five.
No. That’s the tea offering. Yes. Maybe with the precept ceremony. Is this being recorded now?
Yes. Good. Terrific. You’re a step ahead of me. So yes.
Okay. So maybe it’s not in there, but you’ll find it in some other places. For instance, in the Nyungne ceremony, think you might find it generally in in printouts of the precept ceremony that gives you the preliminary prayers of the precept ceremony. It’s often done there. Anyway, it goes on.
You know that one? So it’s alright. How to meditate? Kathleen McDonald’s How to Meditate. And the No.
No. I’m just referring it to people who want to go there to go to a thanks. Yes. In her include in that book. So, anyway, that that’s one that we often use because it’s an auspicious prayer to bless and particularly for the increasing of the offerings.
The special thing about Samantabhādra was he was particularly skilled in making these offerings to the Buddhas, and he would he was able to actually, he was a Bodhisattva who had psychic powers, so so he was able to actually create offerings, you know, like, emanate them. How would you say? Yeah. Sort of material materialize them. He’s able to materialize offerings.
And he was able to materialize so many offerings and then keep on expanding them and expanding them that he was able to offer countless offerings to countless Buddhas and countless Buddha fields and and also to all the Bodhisattvas and so on. And because of this, he accumulated a vast amount of merit. I can’t remember all the figures, but it’s it’s it sort of runs into the billions. You know? And, anyway, by making all these marvelous offerings emanated by his psychic powers, he was able to achieve Buddhahood very quickly because of the amount of merit accumulated.
So you might have learned already we need two kinds of accumulation. We need an accumulation of merit and wisdom. And wisdom is particularly to do with meditating on emptiness, and merit is more to do with things on the relative plane. And we need both those accumulations, and they support one another. And so offerings is one of the most powerful ways of of the accumulation of merit.
And this is why we do these things. And for us, because we don’t have the powers of Samantabhādra, and we probably don’t have strong visualization ability. So we have to do what we can in the way of making material offerings, but just according to what we’re able to afford and so on. So each person does according to their abilities. If we can afford more, then we should do more.
And if we haven’t got much, then even a little bit counts for a lot. Also, whenever we see anything beautiful, we can mentally offer it. And when we, for instance, turn on the light to come into a dark room, we can visualize that we’re offering the light to the Buddhas, and we can offer the light of the sun and the moon, all these beautiful things. Of the actual. Maybe you can turn that off.
We we use we find a source of nice clear water here in Adelaide. The the water in our tap is okay for drinking. I know a lot of people don’t think it is, so this might be a moot point that if you don’t think the water is good enough for drinking, maybe you should also offer the spring water on those big plastic containers on your altar because the principle is that really you should offer what you think is good enough for your own use. But, anyway, this could be a little bit difficult in some circumstances. But, anyway, the thing is that the water should be very clear and and good water.
And the bowls and all the implements that you use for putting the bowls of water out on the altar should be very clean. So when the Tibetans go to fill their water container with water, they always wash out the jug or whatever it is the pitcher that they’re using for the water. They give that a washout with water first, and they always wash the tap. And, also, when they go to make water bowl offerings, they tie a cloth over their face or the monks sort of hold this in over their face with their teeth, which looks a bit funny so that they won’t be I’ve tried to do that, but it doesn’t work because as soon as you start talking, you lose it. But the anyway, the idea is that you shouldn’t breathe on the offerings.
So everything has to be done very, very in a very, very clean way and with the utmost respect. We should think that it’s a like a sacred practice we’re carrying out It’s not something that has to be done like getting breakfast together. It’s, it’s a a a meditational practice. And the more we do it carefully, the more results we get. So, sometimes we tend to think that water bowls are something to be done in a hurry and got out of the way.
But it’s really meditation practice, so if we’re going to do it as a meditation practice and the amount of time we spend on it is not wasted. It’s not just a question of getting the it’s not like going to work in a factory and the more parts you can stand out or whatever, better a day, the time of motion, so the better a day you’ve had. With these kinds of practices, it’s the amount of mindfulness, the amount of devotion, the amount of awareness of concentration you put into the practice. So the first thing you should do is take the bowls and give them a wipe, and you wipe them three times a clean cloth and you visualize that you’re eliminating all your obscurations and negativities while you’re doing that. So generally, we make seven bowls in a row but it doesn’t have to be seven bowls.
This is according to Sūtra. According to Tantra there are special ways of setting up bowls but according to Sūtra it’s just a question of setting up some bowls and according to Sūtra it’s really just water. Geshe Tashi Tsering said that when you’re visualizing things like flowers and fruit and ferns on the eight offerings, you know, where you have a little candle or butter lamp sitting in the middle of the row? That’s the Tantra way of offering. And when you’re offering the Sūtra way, it’s just water.
But of course, it also says in here that you can visualize the bowls as being many different kinds of offerings. There’s no reason why you couldn’t do that according to Sūtra. But the the basic Sūtra practice is just to be offering water. And that is because water is a pure offering. Water symbolizes purity because it’s clear and it’s something which is freely available so we don’t have a lot of attachment to it so we can make a pure offering.
Right. Then the bowl should be in a straight line if possible. If the size of the altar allows, then you should put them in a straight line. If you’re offering if your is too small to arrange the bowls you’ve got in a straight line, then it’s alright to have them going around the corner. But you don’t do fancy things like putting them in curves and swirls and so on because you think that looks prettier.
It’s always done very much according to this orthodox way of doing them and laying them out in a straight line. We’re not trying to be creative. Put empty bowls down on the altar because this is inauspicious. It’s important that if you’re going to leave the bowls on the altar, tip them upside down when they’re empty. And then when you come to of course, they’ll get a little bit of dust on them from the altar, so whenever you use them, you should make sure they get a wipe.
That’s why we have this three times wiping practice. They might have been perfectly clean before, but you always wipe them because it’s part of the ritual. Then there no. There’s two ways of putting the bowls out. Sometimes you can get bowls that are made to stack together nicely that the particularly the bowls that the Tibetans make and so which are designed for water bowls on the altar and made generally so that it’s very easy to stack them together and hold the whole stack of seven together at one time.
And you start off by taking the jug of water and pouring some water into the top bowl. And then from there, you pour it into the next one. And you just leave a little bit in the first one and then you put that first one on the altar. So by doing this, you’re not putting an empty bowl on the altar. It has a little bit of water in it when you put it down.
And then you say three times to bless the offering. And you keep on doing that with the second one and the third one and so on until you’ve done all of them. Now sometimes you’re using bowls which are not designed for using that way. For instance, we’ve got some little cups out there, which are really little Chinese teacups without handles. And they make quite nice water bowls but they won’t pour from one to the other.
You’ll spill water all over the place. It’s inauspicious to pour, to let the water spill while you’re filling the bowls. That’s supposed to be a cause of losing your morality. So we don’t want to do that. So with these kinds of bowls or sometimes you have bowls that are very, very big or heavy and they’re just too awkward to do in this way because you can’t really manage them with one hand.
So in that case, you just take the bowls one at a time, you wipe them one at a time and put a little bit of water on it, and then you place on the altar. When you set the you set the bowls on the altar, you should do them with two hands. That is if you if you’ve got bowls in one hand, you still you still have to use one hand to put it on the altar, you’re sort of using both your hands. If you’re if you’ve got a big bowl or something like that and you haven’t got a jug in your hand, then you can put it down on the altar with both hands because this is more respectful. Am I clear so far?
Yes. It doesn’t have to be seven. That could be any number you like, but it’s traditional to use seven. It can be just one bowl. At Chenrezig Institute, Lama Zopa gave us a big crystal bowl to make water offerings with and we had this big crystal bowl and somebody else came up with a glass cake stand.
So we put crystal bowl on the cake stand. We make a big water offering in this bowl every day, but we also have some sets of seven bowls set out. But generally, the the altar there in front of Buddha would be set out according to Tantra, and sometimes you actually do it with rice bowls as well as the water bowls. Have you seen that? Like like we do it for the Guru Puja.
We have the bowl for the incense and the bowl for the the the fruit have rice in them rather than water. Yes. It’s actually it’s a butter lamp. With Tantra, it can be different too. Like, sometimes you have four waters instead of two waters at the beginning, so that means that you end up with and then sometimes it leaves the naivedya off, or rather the naivedya stays and the shapta off, but the music.
So sometimes we don’t have a bowl for music in Tantra. So, you know, sometimes you have extra bowls and sometimes you have less. Then sometimes the arrangement is different, particularly for Yamāntaka, it’s ranged a bit differently. So there’s many things to learn with Tantra. But according to Sūtra, it’s just water bowls.
And if you want to think of them as being flowers and so on, that’s fine, but it’s not required for Sūtra. So then the the bowl should be just a little bit apart. It’s just a a barley grain apart or a rice grain apart. The barley grain is when you’re pouring it. So then so there there’s a lot of meaning as to why the bowls shouldn’t be actually touching and why they shouldn’t be too far apart and there’s all kinds of symbolism involved with all these things.
And then when you come to pour the water, you try not to make a noise. I think that is because making noise is inauspicious to be separated from the teachings. So you try to pour it silently. And the way they do that is they compare it to a barley grain, which is thin at the ends and thick in the middle. So you pour water thinly at first with just a little water.
And then once you get the flow going, you can pour it a bit faster. And then at the end, you taper it off again. And in this way, you can pour it without making a lot of noise rather than going to splosh. That’s right. If you spill water over the rim of the bowl, it may result in your ethics becoming worse.
But if the bowls are insufficiently filled, your standard of living might decline. So we have to pour them up to the right level. If you too much if you let it come up too high, it’s going to splash over. And you have to use your judgment. You can’t exactly say how far because with small bowls you can fill them up closer to the top than you can with big ones.
And it’s sort of a proportional thing. But it should be just a little bit below the rim. If they’re so high that you can’t pick them up to empty them without splashing the water everywhere, then that’s too full. So when you’ve had that happen to you, you you learn how full is too full. It says the water level should be below the level of the rim of the bowls by about the thickness of a grain of barley.
And I think that’s fine for the smaller bowls that you normally have on the altar, but sometimes you might, particularly if you’ve got a big altar or a Dharma center, sometimes have some very big bowls and you have to have them just a little bit lower proportionately or or they’ll just go all over the place. So it mentioned butter lamps too. We can offer butter lamps here. Electricity is probably better because for one thing, we can leave it burning safely all the time. And for another thing, it’s it’s something that’s clean and doesn’t smell and it doesn’t attract insects so that the insects are not going to lose it.
I’ve seen it. So actually the lamas say at Chenrezig Institute we have a lot of lamps and candles and things on the altar and the lamas used to say that at night it’s better to put the lights out and not kill insects rather than trying to leave a light offering and going on at night if that’s going to harm the insects. And actually, have some electric lights there on the altars, but they’re shaped like lotuses and the insects fly into them and get trapped. So even though they’re not candles, they still kill the insects. And so if the insects stay in them too long, they get dehydrated and die.
So we used to feel that it was better to turn off all those little lights at night. But we had lots of little fairy lights strung up over the ceiling. We first of all got them to celebrate them at Saga Dawa, but then we got into using them all the time because they were a good light offering. And particularly at nighttime in the dark when when all the other lights were up, we have all these fairy lights shining. It looks really pretty.
And if you come from outside and, again, you have big glass windows all the way around. If anybody’s been there, you probably know what I’m talking about. So you can as you walk uphill towards the gompa, you can see all the light display inside. It’s quite effective. But it’s an awful lot of work because these fairy lights are always the globes go out.
And whenever one globe goes, then about seven or eight of them go off. Although they’re they’re still all rough, but you have to work out which of the seven or eight of them it is that you have to replace. So it’s sort of like a full time job keeping them going. But, anyway, that’s our way of making noticed in the other day that I a very Okay. So that’s about it, and we’ll do some practical work now.