Making Offerings Extensively: At Its Height, the Offering Is "Practicing as Taught"

7.4 Making Offerings Extensively: At Its Height, the Offering Is "Practicing as Taught"

The body has bowed, the mouth has praised. The third vow turns to the hands — making offerings extensively.

Further, good son! To make offerings extensively is this: … by the power of Samantabhadra's practice-vows I arouse deep faith and understanding, bringing the Buddhas before my knowing and seeing, and with the finest and most wondrous offering-articles I make offering. Namely: clouds of flowers, clouds of garlands, clouds of heavenly music, clouds of heavenly canopies, clouds of heavenly garments, every kind of heavenly incense — unguent-incense, burning-incense, powdered incense — such clouds as these, each in measure like Mount Sumeru, king of mountains; and I light every kind of lamp — butter-lamps, oil-lamps, lamps of every fragrant oil — each lamp-wick like Mount Sumeru, each measure of lamp-oil like the waters of the great ocean; with such offering-articles as these I make offering constantly.

Samantabhadra first heaps the offerings up to the Flower Ornament's measure: flowers, incense, music, canopies, garments, each "in measure like Mount Sumeru, king of mountains" — heaped as great as Sumeru; the lamps lit, "each lamp-wick like Mount Sumeru, each measure of lamp-oil like the waters of the great ocean" — wicks high as Sumeru, oil deep as the sea. Lavish past saying.

Heaped to the Limit, Samantabhadra Suddenly Turns

Just as the offerings are heaped to overflowing, Samantabhadra turns the word and speaks the eye of this vow:

Good son! Of all offerings, the offering of Dharma is supreme.

Among all offerings, the offering of Dharma stands first. And what is the offering of Dharma? Samantabhadra lists seven:

The offering of practicing as taught; the offering of benefiting sentient beings; the offering of embracing sentient beings; the offering of taking on the sufferings of sentient beings in their stead; the offering of diligently cultivating roots of goodness; the offering of not forsaking the bodhisattva's work; the offering of never leaving the awakening-mind.

To practice as the Buddha taught; to benefit beings, embrace beings, bear the sufferings of beings in their stead; to cultivate roots of goodness diligently; not to forsake the bodhisattva's work; not to leave the awakening-mind. Not one of these seven is incense, flower, or lamp; every one is "the Dharma lived out." The first, "practicing as taught" — doing as the Buddha's teaching says; the last, "never leaving the awakening-mind" — that heart seeking awakening and seeking to deliver beings, not let go for an instant. One end is conduct, the other end is heart; the five between are this heart brought to rest in the real work of benefiting beings. So the offering the Buddha asks is not the thing on the altar-table, but the whole of a person — body, heart, and conduct.

By how much does it stand first? Samantabhadra says it without the least blur: all that measureless offering of goods, "compared with a single thought of dharma-offering, does not reach one part in a hundred, one part in a thousand," nor any part nameable by any analogy of reckoning. Why?

Why so? Because all the Tathāgatas honor the Dharma; and because by practicing as taught, the Buddhas are born.

Because what the Buddhas honor is the Dharma; because only by practicing according to the Dharma are the Buddhas born. However splendid the flowers offered, what the Buddha truly asks is to live according to the Dharma.

Buddha-Recollection Is Itself a Kind of "Dharma-Offering"

Look at the word Samantabhadra uses to measure the dharma-offering — "a single thought of merit." The offering of goods, heaped measureless and boundless, does not match the dharma-offering's "single thought." Again, recollection — that "single thought."

Buddha-recollection falls precisely on the two ends, first and last, of these seven. It falls on "practicing as taught": the Buddha taught people to recollect the Buddha, and so you honestly recollect the Buddha, hold the Buddha in mind day after day, carry the recollection into daily use — this one thought is doing as the Buddha taught, is "practicing as taught." And it falls on "never leaving the awakening-mind": the awakening-mind is that heart seeking awakening, seeking birth in the Pure Land and then to return and deliver beings; and your recollecting the Buddha thought after thought is precisely the tying of this heart, thought after thought, to the Buddha, never to be lost — this is "never leaving the awakening-mind." One Buddha-name, one end conduct, one end heart; of the seven dharma-offerings, the single reciter of the Buddha's name holds the two that matter most.

So this matter of reciting the Buddha is itself an offering of Dharma, and the highest of all offerings. A person may have no flowers and incense heaped like Sumeru in his hands, yet the Buddha-name in his heart, one joining the next, is, in the Buddha's eyes, worth more than a lamp-wick the size of Sumeru. The offering is not in the quantity of the goods, but in whether that one thought is true or not — and this turns again to recollection.

This Vow, the Verse Sings It Thus

With a vast mind of surpassing understanding, deeply believing in all Buddhas of the three times, by the power of Samantabhadra's practice-vows I make offering, pervading all, to every Tathāgata.

With a vast mind of surpassing understanding, deeply believing all the Buddhas of the three times, by the power of Samantabhadra's vows making offering everywhere to all Tathāgatas. What bears the weight in the verse is still "deep belief," "surpassing understanding" — first that one thought of deep faith, and only then does the offering reach its mark.

The offering closes, again, on those eight words: "moment by moment continuous, without interruption; my actions of body, speech, and mind without weariness." Offering thought upon thought — and at its very height, the offering is recollecting the Buddha into one's daily living.

Body, mouth, and hands have all rendered their reverence to the Buddha. But a person faces more than the Buddha — there are one's own faults. The next vow, repenting karmic obstructions: laying the old account open before the Buddha.