Offering Bowls

Product detailed description

The practice of "giving" in which we offer with full awareness to the Awakened Ones (Buddhas) the nourishing and refreshing essences - the richness of the world and our own lives - to receive and transform them into blessings for all sentient beings. This practice of offering is a constant and integral part of Buddhist meditation in the mind's imagination. However, it can also be intensified and made present in daily life, through the practice of ritual realization that takes it from the imagination of mind and words to the attitudes, gestures and actions of the body.

This is what the "altar" is for - a consciously appointed and clearly demarcated (often just a set kathak) space whose purpose is to turn our minds to the presence of the Awakened Ones. Within it, the offering bowls are the primary, essential tool for this practice itself.

Most often metal, there are seven of them, but there are two kinds of offering bowls:

The offering of seven water bowls: all filled with water, ideally with saffron. They express the seven branches of the seven-part wish

1. prostrations - paying homage to the buddhas and bodhisattvas.

2. Giving mandalas - we imagine all the gifts of the world and we give these.

3. Acknowledging our own mistakes made with body, speech and mind in this and previous lives.

4. Shared joy.

5. Request to turn around the Dharma - expressing the request that teachers continue to give out the Buddha's teachings.

6. Request that teachers not go to Nirvana and return to Samsara to pass on the precious teachings.

7. A wish that we can perfectly dedicate all our good deeds and merits from meditation practice into the ocean of merit for the benefit of all sentient beings.

The eight bowl offering - expresses and symbolically represents the eight offerings used in ancient India to welcome and honor distinguished guests. The 1st, 2nd, and 5th bowls are filled with saffron water, the others are filled with dry rice dyed with saffron and small precious stones. We then place the donated items on top of these bowls.

1. Water to drink and rinse the mouth (we pour saffron water).

2. Water to wash their feet (they used to walk barefoot and therefore wash their feet before entering the house). (pouring saffron water)

3. Flowers (flower garlands still in use today) - a flower, ideally fresh.

4. Incense smoke/sticks (meant to attract buddhas to the place to protect it) - incense or scented sticks.

5. Scented water (to refresh the face, neck, throat and chest) - add fragrant essences - oil or perfume to saffron water.

6. Food - for example an apple, nowadays we can make a pyramid of wrapped chocolates.

7. Harmonious sound or music. It can be expressed by a seashell, a bell or a miniature musical object. The bell may be rung or another object may be played when the gift is given.

8. To these seven bowls, an eighth is added - a butter lamp for the gift of light with a higher foot. (When donating, it is in the fifth place, between the 4th and 5th donation bowls.)

 In this case, we change the water in the three bowls every day. the other items are changed several times a month on auspicious days and on the full moon and new moon (see the Tibetan lunar calendar for these auspicious days)

The dedication of these offerings on a spiritual level (to the Buddhas, for the benefit of all beings) is done through the offering of water. It is poured "ceremonially" - i.e. with fully present attention and awareness of meaning - into the offering bowls. The water, the pure medium of purity and life, receives this awareness and with it the concentrated good wishes, gradually fills the individual bowls, making present before us our sacrificial union with the Awakened Ones, the Buddhas, and through them with all sentient beings for whom they act and work.