Extensive offerings on Lama Tsongkhapa Day, Kopan Monastery, December 2020. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Among the preliminary practices, only that of water bowl offerings can be done in a group practice and allows one to add the numbers accumulated by the group’s participants into one’s own count.
In 2020, a center director wrote to Lama Zopa Rinpoche asking whether participants in a group water bowl practice, who were doing the practice in their homes, could still count all the water bowls accumulated by the group, even though everyone was doing the practice separately. Rinpoche responded that yes, people can do water bowls separately in their own home as part of a group, and count all the water bowls made by the group participants as their personal accumulation.
To do this properly, Rinpoche explained, the participants would need to know who is in the water bowl practice group and they would all need to be doing the practice at the same time. So it wouldn’t work if one person offered the water bowls but another person in the group hadn’t finished doing their water bowls or if they didn’t do them that day. It needs coordination. For example, everyone who is part of a home water bowl offering group should agree to a specific time by which all the water bowls are completed. Then the water bowls can be collectively offered. If you do it this way, you can count all the bowls of those who are participating as your personal accumulation.
Rinpoche said that when you do the actual offering practice it is best if you not only offer the water bowls you are doing as a group, but all the water bowls at all the FPMT centers, projects, and services, and also Rinpoche’s house. And to have an even more vast offering, you can visualize the universes full of offerings.
The main reason for these practices is purification, Rinpoche explained. And that comes through experiencing difficulties and hardship in what you are doing. Of course, all these offerings create incredible merit when you visualize this way.
Just to be clear, one can’t include the count of all the water bowls in all the centers toward their own accumulation, but one can and should offer them.
Water bowl offering, Martigny, Switzerland, 2018. Photo by Harald Weichhart.
Several resources are available to support the practice of offering water bowls:
- Please refer to the newly updated booklet Extensive Offering Practice for the water bowl offering practice, which contains the “Actual Offering Prayer ” that is recited when one makes the actual offering.
- The Preliminary Practice of Altar Set-up & Water Bowl Offerings is a booklet that provides an explanation of how to set up a personal altar and how to make water bowl offerings.
- For a commentary on the practice of offering water bowls, you can read Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on How to Make Water Bowl Offerings as a Preliminary Practice, edited by Ven. Robina Courtin.
- The water bowl offering practice can be done in the conjunction with a guru yoga practice, such as A Daily Meditation on Śākyamuni Buddha, Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, or Lama Chopa.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.
Watch Rinpoche’s recent teachings and find links to transcripts, MP3s, additional practice advice, and more on the page Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Teachings on Thought Transformation during the Time of COVID-19.
