How to Maximize Your Offerings Through Visualization

The Buddha said that we get exactly the same merit from making an offering, no matter how tiny, to a statue or painting of the Buddha as we would from making an offering to the actual Buddha. How can we maximize our offerings to be of most benefit? Rinpoche says that even if we have nothing more than a clean bowl in which to offer water—we can visualize this offering as nectar, since a buddha actually sees nectar, and in this way we collect unbelievable merit. Rinpoche also discusses how to offer a mandala—by precisely visualizing each item in it, we get the merit of having actually offered whatever it is we visualized, not what we actually offered, which may just be a small pile of grain or sand. By doing purification with Vajrasattva and collecting merits with mandala offerings, gradually we will be able to change our mind, which once seemed impossible to change, from selfishness into bodhicitta. The teaching for this episode was recorded on September 15, 2017, at Light of the Path Retreat, United States.