The Four Applications Of Mindfulness

Extracted from 'The Buddha Speaks of Amitabha Sutra with commentaries of the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua' page 58 & 63

(Page 58)
Then Ananda said, “We have always lived with you, Buddha, but when you enter Nirvana, where are we going to live?”

Shakyamuni Buddha said, “When I go to Nirvana, all Bhikshus, Bhikshunis, Upasakas, and Upasikas should dwell in the Four Applications of Mindfulness: Mindfulness with regard to the body, feelings, thoughts, and dharmas.

1) Contemplate the body as impure. If you know that the body is impure, you won’t love it, and without love there will be no attachment. Being without attachment is freedom. So first of all,regard the body as impure.
2) Contemplate feelings as suffering. Feelings are all a kind of suffering, whether they are pleasant or unpleasant, for pleasant feelings are the cause of unpleasant feelings.
3) Contemplate thought as impermanent. Thoughts shift and flow and are not permanent.
4) Contemplate dharmas as devoid of self.”

(Page 63)
The Four Applications Of Mindfulness

1) Contemplation of the body as impure. Everyone sees his body as extremely precious. Because you think it is real, you are selfish and profit-seeking. Without a body, there would be no selfishness.

We think our bodies are real and actual. Being selfish, we create offenses and commit evil deeds. We cannot let go of the affairs of the world and calculate on behalf of our bodies all day long, looking for good food, beautiful clothes, and a nice place to live— a little happiness for the body. On the day we die, we are still unclear. “My body is dying,” we moan. “How can it do this to me?” At that time we know that our bodies are unreal, but it’s too late, too late for our regrets.

Ultimately, is the body real? Stupid people think so, but wise people see it merely as a combination of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. It is not ultimate.

“Then,” you ask, “what is ultimate?”

Our own self-nature is
bright and all-illumining;
Our own-self-nature is
perfect and unimpeded.
It is nowhere and nowhere is it not;
to the end of empty space,
it exhausts the Dharma Realm.

Our bodies are temporary dwellings where our self-nature comes to live for a time. But the person dwelling in the hotel is not the hotel, and in the same way, his body is not him. The traveler who thinks that he is the hotel is mistaken. If you know that the body is just like a hotel, you should seek that which dwells within it, for once you have found it, you will recognize your true self.

From the time of birth, the body is impure—a combination of its father’s semen and its mother’s blood. The child grows up with greed, hate, stupidity, pride, and doubt. He commits offenses, creating the karma of killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and taking intoxicants and drugs. Offense-karma is created because of the body. But is the body such a precious thing after all? No.

A precious jewel is pure and undefiled, without stain or the slightest trace of filth. Our bodies, on the other hand, have nine apertures which constantly secrete impure substances: tears from the eyes, wax from the ears, mucus from the nose…

There are religions whose members eat mucus. They say that they are “smelting the cinnabar.” They also eat tears and ear wax thinking that these filthy substances are precious jewels. Isn’t that pitiful?

Two ears, two eyes, and two nostrils make six holes. The mouth is full of phlegm and saliva. That’s seven holes. Add the anus and urinary tract and you have nine. Would you call this pure? Everyone knows that excrement and urine are unclean and, if you don’t believe it, just try seasoning some fine food with a tiny pinch of excrement. No one will eat it. People will want to vomit instead because it is unclean. Would you call this body, dribbling filth from nine holes, a jewel? If it’s a jewel, why do such vile things flow from it?

If you don’t bathe for a week, you itch and squirm and a thick crust forms on your body. Where did it come from? Soon you stink with an odor even a dog finds repulsive. What is the advantage of having a body? Contemplate the body as impure. If you see how filthy it is, do you still love it? Are you still attached? What’s the use of loving such a dirty thing?

“Then can I stab myself? Can I kill myself?” you ask.

No. That’s not necessary. You must borrow this false body and use it to cultivate the Truth. The self-nature dwells within the body. You entered the body of five skandhas and the yin and yang merged in a combination of purity and filth which is your body. If you cultivate, you can go up, and attain purity. If you do not cultivate you will go down, create offense karma, unite with the filth, and turn into a ghost.

Go up. Become a Buddha. Whether or not you cultivate is up to you, however. Nobody can force you to cultivate.

The Venerable Ananda thought that because he was the Buddha’s cousin, he didn’t need to cultivate. He thought that the Buddha would just give him samadhi. But the Buddha couldn’t do that, and so it was not until after the Buddha’s Nirvana, when Ananda was about to edit the Sutras, that he finally certified to the fourth Stage of Arhatship and realized that he could not neglect cultivation.

Be mindful that the body is impure, don’t be so fond of it, and don’t take it as a treasure.

You say, “I can’t stand criticism. I can’t stand it.”

Who are you?

“If they hit me, I can’t bear it. It hurts!”

Really? If you put your attachments down and see through them, there is neither pain nor not pain. Who is in pain? What, exactly, hurts? If someone hits you, pretend that you bumped into a wall. If someone scolds you, pretend that they are singing a song or speaking Japanese. How can they scold you if you don’t understand them?

“Are they speaking Spanish or Portugese? French? German? I’ve never studied languages so I don’t understand…” They can scold you, but it’s nothing. In general, once you see through, break, and put down the attachment to your body, you win your independence.

Contemplate your body as impure. Don’t regard it with so much importance. It’s not important.

Contemplate feelings, thoughts, and dharmas as impure also.

2) Contemplate feelings as suffering. Feelings may be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral; from the point of view of the three sufferings, unpleasant feelings are the suffering within suffering, pleasant feelings are caught up in the suffering of decay, and neutral feelings are the suffering of process. Wake up! Everything you enjoy is a form of suffering. If you know that pleasure is suffering, you will not be attached to it. I often say:

Enduring suffering puts an end to suffering;
Enjoying blessings destroys blessings.

If you endure your suffering, it will pass. If you enjoy your blessings, they, too, will pass. Contemplate feelings as suffering.

The body, thought, and dharmas are also suffering. Although there are Four Applications of Mindfulness, you can divide them up; each of the four characteristic qualities, impurity, suffering, impermanence, and the absence of self, can be applied to the body, to feelings, to thoughts, and to dharmas, making sixteen applications in all.

3) Contemplate thoughts as impermanent. The Vajra Sutra says, “Past thought cannot be obtained, present thought cannot be obtained, and future thought cannot be obtained.” All your thoughts are unobtainable. They flow without stopping and so they are impermanent. The body, feelings and dharmas are also impermanent.

4) Contemplate dharmas as without self. Basically, since there are no dharmas, from whence cometh the self? The self is a combination of four elements and the five skandhas—a creation of form dharmas. Outside of the four elements and the five skandhas there is no self. So contemplate dharmas as being without a self.

The Four Applications of Mindfulness are very wonderful. If you investigate them thoroughly, understand and dwell on them, you will be unattached and will attain true freedom. If you’re attached, you can’t be free. Why? Because you’re attached! So dwell in the Four Applications of Mindfulness. Dwell and yet do not dwell.


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Hell Scene Painting 地狱变相图导览

Hell Scene Painting [English Version]


地狱变相图导览（新版国语）


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Generating Power

Extracted from book ~ Meditations 2,
Dhamma Talks by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
July, 2003

Concentration practice involves work. We often think of it as a place for the mind to rest, and it is, but it's even more a place for the mind to recharge its batteries. That requires energy, requires effort, requires work. In Thailand the idiom for meditation is "to make an effort." And in meditating there very definitely are things we have to do. It's not just a letting go of the tension, a letting go of the stresses of daily life. There's also work to be done to keep mindfulness continuous, to keep your alertness continuous and all-around, to keep both mindfulness and alertness spinning around inside here like a generator. A generator sits in one place but it has to spin around to create electric power. If the generator simply sits still, it can't create anything. There has to be some activity for the electrons to run in a current.

The same is true with concentration. The two causes for gaining a sense of ease and wellbeing are directed thought and evaluation. Directed thought grows out of mindfulness; evaluation, out of alertness. You have to keep directing your thoughts to the breath, keep evaluating it, noticing when it's comfortable, noticing when it's not. And then there's singleness of preoccupation: You try to keep the mind at one with its object, make it become one with its object. All of this takes effort, and sometimes people will sit in meditation, put a lot of effort into it, and at the end of the period say, "Well, the meditation didn't get any results. It was just constant effort." However, it's a normal principle in practicing concentration that it requires effort before it can start giving results. The effort is never wasted.

Over time you begin to get a sense of how much effort is too much, how much is too little. When you get a sense of "just right," the results you want start appearing. At that point, the payoff comes as you're doing the work. You don't have to wait until the end of the year before your paycheck arrives. You receive installments all along the way. So as you're doing the meditation work, keep this point in mind: It is work, but as you get more precise at it, more subtle at it, the results you're looking for will start to appear.

Ajaan Lee talks about concentration work being basically three activities — directed thought, evaluation, and singleness of preoccupation — with all three spinning around in one place. When you start being very precise in doing them, they start showing their results. In other words, you keep reminding yourself to stay with the breath. If you notice that the mind is wandering off, you immediately get it back on track. Try to sense when the mind is preparing to go even before it actually goes. That way you can nip the distractions in the bud.

And try to be as alert as possible to how the breathing feels. Try to make it feel refreshing. This way the work becomes something you can easily keep on doing, because you feel refreshed in doing your work. Sitting here, it feels good breathing in, feels good breathing out. Ordinarily large areas of the body are starved for breathing energy, so give them a chance to drink it in, to bathe in it. Think of the energy going to the different parts of the body — "Who wants this breath? Who wants the next one?" — until you've got the whole body nourished. If it feels good, do it again. Next time around try to be even more perceptive as to what's going on, what's needed where.

As for singleness of preoccupation, make sure the mind doesn't lose itself, doesn't start wandering off in other directions, getting distracted. And watch out for the hindrances, because they drain your energy. Even though you may be generating a lot of power here, if the hindrances get in the way everything gets drained away. Like the solar electric system here at Wat Metta: When we were first setting up the batteries, we were careless and put them on a couple of boards on the ground. Well, sure enough, a rain storm came. One of the wires shorted, and by the next day the batteries were totally dead. Even though the solar panels were pumping out energy, the batteries were so dead you couldn't revive them.

The same holds true in the meditation: If you keep coming back to the breath but then allow the mind to go wandering off in other directions, then all the power, all the recharging in your batteries, just gets drained away. So you've got to be careful not to go thinking about anything else while you're here with the breathing. When thoughts about other things do come passing through, you don't want to get involved in them. Just let them go, let them go. Part of the problem is that you get curious: "What's this thought about? What's that thought about? Maybe it's something important, maybe it's something entertaining." Watch out for those attitudes, because that's like opening the door for thieves to come into your house, or like scraping away the insulation on your wires before the rats do. So as soon as a thought that's not related to the breath comes into the mind, just let it go.

And there are certain ways of thinking about the breath or the meditation that actually get in the way of the meditation, too, so you've got to watch out for them as well. The big troublemakers are restlessness and anxiety. Restlessness is wanting to push for results before the mind is really ready to give them, trying to figure out things beforehand, before you've actually done the concentration work. You've got to do the work first and let the results develop on their own.

Ajaan Lee gives the example of getting gold out of a rock. You can't just go to the mountain and use a pick to extract the gold. You've got to take the rock and subject it to heat. The fire will take time, getting hot enough so that it can melt the gold, but when it reaches the melting point, the gold will all come out on its own. In other words, when your powers of concentration are strong enough, when they reach the point where they're ready, then the work of discernment gets a lot easier. Things separate out right before your very eyes without your having to do an awful lot of analysis. When the mind has been concentrated long enough and solidly enough, you just pose a question and things will appear very clearly, for you've created the environment in which they can appear clearly, in that the mind is solid and still.

As for anxiety, one of the standard definitions is concern about what other people think. "What's this person going to think? What's that person going to think? If what I know is right offends people, what am I going to do? Do I dare do it?" That kind of anxiety really gets in the way of your goodness. If you let yourself get led astray by those thoughts in your daily life, it's very hard not to get led astray while you're meditating. One of the things I really appreciated about Ajaan Fuang was that he really didn't care what other people thought. If he knew that what he was doing was right, then even if it was unpopular he went ahead with it, because he realized that there's no way you can control other peoples' attitudes toward you. If they want to think ill of you, well, that's their right. And, ultimately, where does popularity get you? Not very far. It certainly doesn't get you very far on the path.

I also noticed that Ajaan Fuang didn't trust people who were concerned about being popular. There was an interesting exchange once when he was going to appoint one of the merchants in town to be the monastery treasurer. The first question he asked the man was, "In your future life would you rather be popular or wealthy?" And the man said, "Wealthy. If you're wealthy you can buy popularity." So Ajaan Fuang appointed him treasurer. He liked the idea that the man was not all that concerned about being popular. If the treasurer was concerned about being popular you couldn't trust him. He might be afraid to do the right thing when push came to shove, and certain people wanted to get their hands on the monastery funds.

So it's important to keep this attitude in mind when you know that something is right: Don't worry about whether it's popular, don't let yourself be swayed by public opinion. Of course this means that you have to be very careful about what you see as right. In other words, you let yourself be swayed by advice from wise people, from people you respect. But as for people in general whose opinions don't have any real principles, you don't have to worry about what they think. No matter what they can do to you, they can't touch the most important part of you, which is your own inner integrity.

This is how the practice requires courage. Conviction in the principle of karma requires that you make a commitment not to hedge your bets. You're going to depend totally on the skillfulness of your own intentions to whatever extent you can develop that skillfulness. That's the principle to which you have to devote yourself.

As for other principles or lack of principles, let them go. Sometimes this feels a little scary. You're so used to hedging your bets so that at least you're popular, at least you've got connections, so that if the principle of karma doesn't work out you've got something else to fall back on. But to be really committed to the principle of karma, to get the best results from it, you have to be committed.

And to be really committed requires repeated acts of commitment. This is why in the Forest tradition so much emphasis is placed on the virtue of courage. Not foolhardiness, but courage. It takes a certain amount of courage to keep the mind centered and still, because otherwise we're always trying to plan ahead, second guess things, anticipate things. But for the mind to have really strong powers of concentration you basically have to tell yourself, "I don't care. I'm going to focus on doing what needs to be done right now and I'm not going to try to provide for alternative things to fall back on." In other words, when the time comes to be focused and concentrated, that's all you do. Give yourself to it totally. Have a sense of conviction, a sense of confidence in the practice, and don't try to second guess things. When the concentration has developed to a proper level, it'll start showing its results on its own.

In terms of that simile I often use about the unripe mango: You don't keep yellow paint on hand just in case, to make the mango nice and yellow if watering the tree doesn't work out. If you're convinced that your mango is going to become yellow by pouring water and fertilizer on the roots of the tree, that's all you focus on. You don't worry about when it's going to get yellow. You realize that if you stick with the watering long enough, the mango will have to ripen. That's all you have to do.

When you have this kind of single-mindedness, then concentration gets more and more powerful. It really recharges you. It's not just a relaxation technique. It contains an element of commitment, an element of applied energy. At the same time, you're making sure that nothing is draining your battery away. That way you gain more and more strength from the concentration, so that when the time comes to leave the concentration — even though it involved some work — you feel refreshed, energized, charged. That's not simply because you've been able to let go of patterns of tension in the body. The different channels of breath energy in the body have also been able to reinforce one another. At the same time, the good qualities of the mind get reinforced and strengthened. They've been allowed to nourish one another, too.

This is how the work of concentration starts showing its results, with a sense of wellbeing, a sense of inner strength, a sense of being energized. After all, concentration is one of the five strengths. And if our discernment is going to have the strength it needs to penetrate all the veils of delusion we've put up in the mind, it's going to require good strong concentration, good committed concentration to do the work that leads to release.




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How to Make Light Offerings to Accumulate the Most Extensive Merit

by Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Light Offerings

The Benefits of Making Light Offerings
It is said in the Ten Wheel Sutra of the Essence of Earth (Kshitigarbha): "All comfort, happiness and peace in this world are received by making offerings to the Rare Sublime Ones (the Triple Gem), therefore those who like to have comfort, happiness and peace always attempt to make offerings to the Rare Sublime Ones."

In general, all the collections of goodness of samsara and nirvana are the result of having made offerings to the Triple Gem. In particular, one receives different benefits by doing service with each of the various individual offerings. Buddha, the Fourth Guide, whose holy mind is enriched with the ten powers, announced in the "Tune of Brahma" Sutra Clarifying Karma that there are ten benefits of making light offerings:

1. One becomes like the light in the world.
2. One achieves the clairvoyance of the pure flesh eye [as a human].
3. One achieves the devas' eye.
4. One receives the wisdom of knowing what is virtue and what is non-virtue.
5. One is able to eliminate the darkness of ignorance, the concept of inherent existence.
6. One receives the illumination of wisdom, even in samsara one never experiences darkness.
7. One receives great enjoyment wealth.
8. One is reborn in the deva or human realms.
9. One quickly becomes liberated.
10. One quickly attains enlightenment.

Those devas or humans who accumulate the merit of making one light offering, or just a handful of flowers, will see the fully enlightened Buddha Maitreya. It is said in the Sutra of Arya Maitreya: "Those who offer 1,000 lights, or 1,000 blue utpali flowers, or who make the pinnacle of a stupa, who make the holy form, will be reborn when Maitreya Buddha shows the deed of gaining enlightenment and receive his first Dharma Teaching." It is also said that even those who offer one flower, or who rejoice at the merit of others who offer, will achieve this Buddhahood. This means that even if one doesn't get enlightened during Shakyamuni's teaching, then during Maitreya Buddha's teaching one's mind will get ripened and liberated.

Offering light, in particular, is a special door of dependent arising to quickly complete the accumulation of merit and receive blessings. It is said in the Second Chapter of the Root Tantra of Chakrasamvara (who is the manifestation of Shakyamuni Buddha, "If you wish for sublime realization, offer hundreds of lights".

If one wishes to know in detail the results of making offerings to the holy objects or doing service to the Buddha and the holy objects, one should study the Sutra of the Compassionate-Eye Looking One (Avalokiteshvara), or the Sutra of Sang Gyal (i.e., the Sutra in which Buddha gave instruction to King Sang Gyal), or Konchog Thala. It says in the text, Immortal Drum Sound Mantra: "If one devotes to the Inconceivable One, then the result is also inconceivable". Similarly, it is said in the Sutra of the Compassionate-Eye Looking One: "Since the dharmas (i.e. qualities) of the Buddha Gone As It Is (Skt.Tathagatha) are limitless, making offering to the One Gone As It Is has limitless, infinite, inconceivable, incomparable, unimaginable and numberless benefits."

It says in the Sutra, The Small Quotation (Tib. lung ten tsek): "It is possible for the moon and stars to fall down to the earth, for the mountains and forests to rise up into the sky, and for the water in the great oceans to completely dry up, but it is not possible for the Great Sage (i.e. Buddha) to tell a lie." Keep this in your mind. Generate strong devotion and faith in the root of all happiness and goodness: actions and their results and the blessings of the Three Precious Rare Sublime Ones. Having this body and possessions, which are as though borrowed for a year, a month, or a few days, one should attend day and night, all the time, to the practice of taking the essence of this human life, which is of short duration like a lightning flash, by planting seeds as much as possible in the special Merit Field.

The actual practice: How to Make Light Offerings

Setting a good motivation before lighting the candles generate bodhicitta. Think:

"The purpose of my life is not only to obtain happiness and solve problems for myself, but to free each being from problems and lead them to happiness, especially to the state of full enlightenment. Therefore, I must achieve complete enlightenment. To do this, I must complete the two accumulations, the merit of fortune (method) and the merit of wisdom. Therefore, I am going to make charity with the light offerings and make offering to the Merit Field."

Also remember to motivate for the success of particular projects, for people who have passed away or who are sick, or for other particular purposes.












Reciting OM AH HUNG

As soon as you light the candles, or turn on the electricity, bless them by reciting om ah hung three times. If you don't immediately bless them, the spirit possession called Tsu Peu Chikpa enters into the offering and then , if you offer that light, it becomes an obstacle, it causes mental damage. In this case, it causes you to fall asleep without control when doing listening, reflection and meditation practices on the holy dharma. One should understand that it is the same thing with all the rest of the offerings, if one doesn't bless them there are different spirit possessions that enter into them and then the offering damages the mind and causes obstacles.

Making Charity to the Beings of the Six Realms

Think that these offerings have been received due to the kindness of sentient beings. Think, "These are not mine."

Make charity to all the hell beings, preta beings, animals, humans, suras and asuras. We make charity of the offerings in order to oppose the thought of the light offerings belonging to us. Think that we and all other beings are together going to make offerings to the Buddha. Generate happiness at having accumulated infinite merit by thinking in this way.

Blessing the Offerings

Now bless the offering substances by reciting the mantra that allows each Buddha to receive inconceivable offerings, and by expressing the Power of the Truth:
Offering Prayer

I actually perform and mentally transform the offering substances of human beings and devas. May the whole sky be pervaded by Samanthabhadra clouds of offerings.

Mantra to Increase the Offerings

om namo bhagavate - bendze sarwaparma dana tathagataya -
arhate samyaksam buddhaya - tayata - om mendze bendze maha
bendze maha tadza bendze - maha bidya bendze maha bodhicitta bendze -
maha bodhi mendo pasam kramana bendze -
sarwa karma awarana bisho dana bendze soha (3X)

Power of the Truth

By the power of the truth of the Three Rare Sublime Ones, the blessings of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the great richness of having completed the two merits, and the inconceivable pure sphere of existence (the emptiness of existence), may it become only like that.

Making the Offerings

We make offering to all the holy objects, by visualizing that they are manifestations of our own root guru who is one with all other virtuous friends. Since the virtuous friend is the most powerful object in the Merit Field, offering in this way one accumulates the most extensive merit. It is said by the Savior Nagarjuna in the text of the Five Stages:

"Abandon making other offerings, purely attempt offering to the guru. By pleasing the guru, one will achieve the sublime wisdom omniscient mind." It is said by Guru Vajradhara in the Root Tantra text Buddhaya: "One pore of the spiritual master is more sublime than all the merit accumulated by offering to all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the ten directions."

First, we offer to all the holy objects in our own room or temple by visualizing that these are manifestations of our own root guru who is one with all other virtuous friends.

Then, we make offering to all the holy objects in this country, thinking of them as manifestations of one's own virtuous friends. Then, we make offering to all the holy objects in India: principally Bodh Gaya Stupa, where the Buddha showed the holy deed of enlightenment, then all the rest of the holy objects (by thinking of them as one's own virtuous friend).

We make offering to all the holy objects in Tibet: in particular, the holy statue that Buddha himself blessed, then all the rest of the holy objects, by thinking of them as one's own virtuous friend.

Then, we offer to all the holy objects in Nepal: principally the most holy precious object, the great holy stupa at Boudhnath, then all the rest of the holy objects by thinking of them as the virtuous friend. Then, we offer to all the holy objects in all the remaining Buddhist countries by thinking of them as one's own virtuous friend.

We offer to all the Buddhas, Dharma and Sangha of the ten directions by thinking of them as one's own virtuous friend.

We offer to all the holy objects of the ten directions: statues, stupas, scriptures, etc. by thinking of them as one's own virtuous friend. There is also a special way of making light offerings according to highest secret mantra. In this way, great bliss is generated in all the holy minds.

The Actual Light Offering Prayer

Then recite the actual prayer of the light offerings five, 10 or 1,000 times, etc., depending on how many times one wishes to make the light offerings:

Light Offering Prayer

These actually performed and mentally performed light offerings, the manifestations of one's own innate awareness, Dharmakaya, these clouds of offerings equalling the infinite sky, I am offering to all the gurus and Three Sublime Ones, and to the statues, stupas and scriptures, which are the guru. We have accumulated infinite merit by having generated bodhicitta, by having made charity to the sentient beings, and by making the actual light offerings to the gurus, Triple Gem and holy objects of the ten directions.

Due to this merit, may whoever I promised to pray for and whoever prays to me, whose name I have received to pray for--principally servants, benefactors and disciples, then all the remainder migrator beings living and dead--may the rays of the light of the five wisdoms completely purify all their degenerate vows of samaya right now.

May all the sufferings of the evil gone realms be ceased right now.
May all the three realms of samsara be empty right now.
May all the impure minds and their obscurations be purified.
May all impure appearances be purified.
May the five holy bodies and wisdom spontaneously arise.

(Repeat as many times as you wish to offer the lights)

Dedication Prayers

Due to these infinite merits, may whatever sufferings sentient beings have ripen on me now. May whatever happiness and virtue I have accumulated (including all the realizations of the path and the highest goal enlightenment) be received by each hell being, preta being, animal, human being, sura and asura right now.

By this dedication one has accumulated infinite merit, so rejoice:

May the precious sublime thought of enlightenment, which is the source of all success and happiness for oneself and for all sentient beings, be generated without delaying for even a second. May whatever has been generated increase more and more without degeneration.

Due to all the three times' merits accumulated by me, by the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and by sentient beings, which are empty from their own side, may the I, which is empty from its own side, achieve enlightenment, which is empty from its own side, and lead sentient beings, who are empty from their own side, to that Enlightenment by myself alone.

Whatever white virtues we have thus created we dedicate as causes Enabling us to uphold the holy Dharma of scriptures and insights and to fulfil without exception the prayers and deeds of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas of the three times.

By the force of this merit in all our lives
May we never be parted from Mahayana's four spheres
And may we reach the end of our journey along the paths
Of renunciation, Bodhicitta, the pure view and the two stages

Special Mantra to Increase the Merit One Hundred Thousand Times

chom den de de zhin shek pa dra chom pa yang dak pa
dzog pa sang gye nam pa nang dze oe kyi gyal po la chag tsel lo (3x)

jang chub sem pa sem pa chen po kun tu zang po la chag tsel lo (3x)

om pentsa driwa awa boghi ne soha (7x)

om duru duru zaya mukhe soha (7x)

Final Dedication Prayers

May all the important pure wishes be completed due to the blessings of the eminent Victors and their Children (Buddhas and Bodhisattvas), due to the truth that dependent-arising is unbetrayed, and due to the power of my pure spiritual attitude.

May myself, family and all sentient beings in all lifetimes due to Lama Tsong Khapa being the direct guru, never be separated away, even for a second, from the pure complete path admired by the Victorious Ones.

Due to the merits of myself and others, may the victorious teachings of Losang Dragpa flourish for a long time. May all the centers and projects of the FPMT receive all the necessary conditions to preserve and spread the teachings of Lama Tsong Khapa immediately. May all obstacles be pacified, may the general organization and the individual meditation centers, all the activities to preserve and spread the Dharma, particularly Lama Tsong Khapa's teachings, cause the teachings to continue without degeneration and spread in the minds of all sentient beings. May all the necessary conditions be received immediately, without any obstacle, and the members who have sacrificed their life to benefit others throughout the organization have a long life, be healthy, may all their activities please the virtuous friend and in all their lives may they always be guided by a perfectly qualified Mahayana virtuous friend and all their wishes immediately succeed according to the Dharma.

This Light Offering Practice was composed by Lama Zopa Rinpoche in Taiwan, February, 1994. It was edited by Ven. Sarah Tresher for use by the students of Amitabha Buddhist Center, who on Rinpoche's advice wished to make light offerings at the Center.

Copyright (c) Wisdom Publications.

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Biography of Ajahn Chah

Watch playlist on Youtube
In this series of videos, Ajahn Jayasaro speaks about the life of Ajahn Chah. Ajahn Jayasaro is an English disciple of Ajahn Chah, and the writer of Ajahn Chah's biography in Thai language.
http://www.ajahnchah.org/videos.htm

Books by Ajahn Chah (Click to browse Amazon Reader Reviews)
~ Food for the Heart: The Collected Teachings of Ajahn Chah
~ Everything Arises, Everything Falls Away: Teachings on Impermanence and the End of Suffering
~ Being Dharma: The Essence of the Buddha's Teachings


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Technorati: Buddhism Buddha Buddhist Dharma Compassion Wisdom Religion Meditation Zen Philosophy Spirituality Inspiration Peace Insight

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