Page:Dudjom Rinpoche A Torch Lighting the Way to Freedom.pdf/190

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: