7. Considering one’s aim in making such an offering
The master Ashvagosha says:
All these sources of good that I have accomplished
I dedicate as the cause of the state beyond the world,
Without thoughts related to cyclic existence, or hopes
Of any resulting fame, praise, or happiness, celestial or human.
Unless all our meritorious actions are backed by the skillful means of
compassion and the wisdom of emptiness, they will merely become causes
of cyclic existence resulting in cyclic existence. So it is extremely important
that our actions be exclusively backed by the wisdom that realizes the
profound meaning. As we find in The Way of the Bodhisattva,
When something and its nonexistence
Both are absent from before the mind,
No other option does the latter have:
It comes to perfect rest, from concepts free.155
When we do not have in mind any characterizing thoughts, nor even think of
emptiness, which is absence of characteristics, but remain, without
remaining,l in the state of emptiness—the ultimate nature that transcends
both things with characteristics and the mental image of absence of
characteristics—the accumulation of merit becomes perfectly pure, as
indicated in Introduction to the Middle Way:
Giving, void of giver, gift, receiver,
Is called a perfection that transcends the world.156
The object to which you are offering the Buddhafield, the things you are
offering, and you yourself, the offerer, are from the beginning devoid of real
existence or characteristics, so rest in evenness in the natural state
completely free of elaboration, without any concept of subject, object, and
action. Offering in this way, as an unceasing manifestation of the merely
illusory appearance aspect of interdependent arising, will become an
unsurpassable source of good, in which generosity and the other
transcendent perfections are performed with the eye of wisdom and the two
accumulations are united.
8. The unique benefits
From the point of view of actually making the offering, a cloud of offerings
like this constitutes the accumulation of merit, while from the point of view
of its being backed by wisdom free from concepts, it constitutes the
accumulation of wisdom. Even if we make a materially small mandala
offering, our special visualization and attitude serve as skillful methods to
increase it, and we will therefore gain infinite merit. Among the numerous
explanations on this point, the Mandala Sutra states:
Page:Dudjom Rinpoche A Torch Lighting the Way to Freedom.pdf/190
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