Offer Merit with Your Action
Light a candle
Light incense
Serve the community
Bow to Buddha
Circle the BUddha
Ring the bell
MAke something by hand
Sew a stitich
Give something away
Take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha
Put hands in gassho
End hope for number one
Reveal your virtues
Memorize the precepts
Put hands in shashu
Memorize a sutra
Hand copy a sutra
Serve your teachers
Study a koan
Write an offering
Offer food
Offer water
Offer zazen
Clean the altar
Repeat a mantra
Make a mandal
Purify the mind
Watch your thoughts
Open your hands to help
please add to this merit
thank you
Light incense
Serve the community
Bow to Buddha
Circle the BUddha
Ring the bell
MAke something by hand
Sew a stitich
Give something away
Take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha
Put hands in gassho
End hope for number one
Reveal your virtues
Memorize the precepts
Put hands in shashu
Memorize a sutra
Hand copy a sutra
Serve your teachers
Study a koan
Write an offering
Offer food
Offer water
Offer zazen
Clean the altar
Repeat a mantra
Make a mandal
Purify the mind
Watch your thoughts
Open your hands to help
please add to this merit
thank you
posted by Dog Hair at 7:35 AM
4 Comments:
Thank you Ansgar...I'll add them to my lists of lists of offerings...
AND just a little reminder...none of this offering has to do with striving to get anything whatsoever NOTHING not relief or joy or care or anything...just offering wholeheartedly no matter how you might feel or think...wholehearted offering of merit.
NON conceptual appreciation for others; everything, your self
What do you offer without words and thoughts
Opening a door
Stepping aside
Remaining silent
Winking
Blowing a kiss
Nodding your head
Smiling
Shaking a hand
Please add your own appreciations
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Aplogies for violating the simplicity of the list which was the invitation that was offered. I got tangled up, and tryed to wander to get back to simplicity. Then decided to just allow the indulgence..
loving the gray of the sky, the cold rain,
opening to my mother's beauty,
sitting with my child beside a lake,
allowing unlimited play ground time,
allowing the old man's confusion,
completing the sentence
observing the movement of pigeons on
a rainy day,
listening to Bach
taking the pictures of the children in the cold
gathering flowers from the garden at dusk
seeing the heron fly through the darkening sky
Can any action be an offering?
Years ago when I was changing clothes, from home spun cotton cloth to jeans, to janitor blue uniform to gray suit -- when I moved my Bhagavad Gita from an open hand to a closed leather briefcase, I went a little into hiding.
Would Arjuna's truths abide with me in the Sears Tower, the long upwards elevator ride, the beige and gray, the boxes and walls? I remember the lovers under a desk, caught by the cleaning staff. "Some things are so clearly against Sears Roebuck Company policy that they do not require discussion." I admired the authoritative tones. I imagined the cleaning ladies shock, the hurried putting on of clothes, the regret, the laughter, the embarrassment, the fear.
"Any offering --- a leaf, a flower, or fruit, a cup of water -- I will accept it ... if given with a loving heart." said Krishna from the chariot, and he was in disguise as well -- a god dressed as a charioteer in order to speak in the midst of a battle field to a soldier frozen in remorse of killing.
"Et incarnatus est"
Is not the whole Christian story one of disguise -- the parables, the pearls before swine, the manger, god made man. Could my disguise be an offering? The gray suit, the striped tie, my leather briefcase where my Gita hid. Hiding sometimes is an action of the offering, to keep it out of words and explanations, to allow it to fall quietly to the ground like a leaf whose summer has moved on back into the veins of the tree or into the air or the earth to give again in some other form, some other disguise.
"all those who love and trust, even the lowest of the low -- prostitutes and beggars will attain the ultimate"
The peacock in the dust, rough cut garnets on a twisted string, the stolen jewels remembered by the child as her baby grows within her.
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