Lamp Offering

By Category: Meditation & PracticeTags:
Photo from Hsi Lai Temple

Offering lamps at Buddhist temples and stupas is a common practice. The Flower Adornment Sutra says, 

The lamp of wisdom can break through all forms of darkness.

As such, lamps represent the light of wisdom that pierces through the darkness of ignorance. This empowers sentient beings encumbered by confusion.

The Buddhist practice of offering lamps originates from the
actions of a poor girl named Nanda. Her story can be read in The Prophecy of King Ajatasatru Becoming a Buddha Sutra, which tells us that the merit for offering a lamp can ever lead one to become a Buddha.

The purpose of a lamp offering is to light the lamp of the mind. What is the lamp of the mind? Wisdom, intelligence, loving-kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity, and a sense of shame are all lights for the mind. When the lamp is lit, our Buddha nature, brilliance, and purity all appear.

Merit does not depend on the size of the offering, but rather on the depth of sincerity with which a gift is given.

Everyone can become a lamp that can illuminate the hearts of others. If you are knowledgeable, you can become a lamp of knowledge. If you are deeply ethical, you can become a lamp of morality. If you are especially capable, you can become a lamp of strength and perseverance. If you are deeply caring, you can become a lamp of loving-kindness and compassion. When you shine light in these ways, others will grow closer to you. We should all strive to become lamps for our families, our communities, and the whole world. Through our actions, society will gradually become brighter and more peaceful.

The Different Karmic Effects Spoken to Elder Shoujia Sutra says there are ten merits of offering lamps:

  • First, they bring light to the world.
  • Second, no matter where one is reborn, one’s eyes will be undamaged.
  • Third, one will gain heavenly vision.
  • Fourth, one will gain wholesome wisdom and the ability to differentiate between wholesome and unwholesome phenomena.
  • Fifth, the great darkness will be dispelled.
  • Sixth, one will gain illuminated wisdom.
  • Seventh, one will receive great merit.
  • Eighth, one will never be reborn in a realm of darkness.
  • Ninth, at the end of one’s life, one will reborn in a heavenly realm.
  • Tenth, one will quickly realize nirvana.

From Ten Paths to Happiness, written by Venerable Master Hsing Yun.

More Featured Articles

I Am Not a Monk “Sponging Off” Buddhism (II)
It is enough for most monks to only have the ability to chant and teach the Dharma, and of course I too can chant sutras and teach the Dharma. But only being this kind of monk was not something I was willing to do. I wanted to become a monk who was able to engage in propagating the Dharma in a multifaceted way: There is Read more
A Moment and an Eternity of the Mind
What is the fastest thing in the universe? Of course, everyone knows it is light, which moves at three hundred thousand kilometers per second. However, in Buddhism, the fastest thing is not light but a person’s mind. The speed of mind is several hundred times faster than light and is not limited by time and space. In a flash you can think of Li Bo, Read more
The Strength of Commitment
To "commit" is to give assurance to others and to make a conscientious effort to deliver a promise. To instill credibility and trustworthiness, we must honor our words. Confucius once said, "One without credibility is like a large vehicle without a brake pedal, or a small carriage without axles. How can one go anywhere?"Living up to one's word is a basic courtesy. In past agricultural Read more
Five Precepts: Freedom of the Heart
Many of us think that after undertaking the precepts life will become a matter of you-can’t-do-this and you-can’t-do-that. We wonder if that isn’t limiting us even more. We worry that it will mean a loss of freedom. This is why some people will question: Why should I receive the precepts and end up just limiting myself!In fact, if we were to go to a prison Read more
The Stages of Counting the Breath
Master Zhiyi’s “six wonderful methods” describe four different kinds of specialized breathing: bellowing winds, broken panting, low-pitched breathing, and internalized breathing.1. Bellowing Winds“Bellowing Winds” describes when one’s inhalations become more and more powerful. As the breathing becomes deeper and longer it can become very loud. This is because, once the power of one’s concentration has been gathered, it can be transferred elsewhere with great force. Read more
The Significance of Breathing
In the Sutra of Forty-Two Sections, the Buddha asked his disciples, "How long is one's life?" One of the monks replied, "A few years." The next one answered, "A few days!" Another one said, "Less than one day!" Another responded, "Between meals!" Finally, the Buddha said, "Life lasts for the duration of one breath." Life is extraordinarily precious and yet it is based on a Read more
Speaking with Kind Words
If we want to understand what the Dharma teaches us about building affinity and living in harmony with others, we must first understand the four great all-embracing virtues. The Buddha teaches that for us to realize our true capacity of connecting with and serving our fellow citizens, we have to first build a good rapport, and the four virtues are tools to that end. The four Read more
Greed: The Cause of Suffering
Though the worlds that we see are fundamentally a product of our own minds, they usually do not appear this way to us. Like images in an intense dream, our perceptions appear to be wholly real to us, and not to have been generated by our own mental activity. For this reason, the Buddha taught many ways to help us comprehend the true nature of Read more
From the Space outside Us to the Space inside Us
Most of us have an idea of what constitutes the space outside us; it is the environment in which we live. This includes the house we live in, the city we live in, or even the world we live in. Just as we need to skillfully manage our relationship to others, to the environment, and to wealth, we also need to properly manage our relationship Read more
Healing the Body
Technological progress and advances in modern science have led to material improvements that have enhanced the quality of people’s lives on many levels. Yet, no matter how much we have progressed or how advanced our technology is, there still remain fundamental problems in life that science will never be able to solve.Two of the greatest problems people face are birth and death. No sooner are Read more
The Mind is the Source of Unwholesomeness
The Buddha often explained emptiness and impermanence by getting people to think about how phenomena arise, change, and decline. Read more
Harmful Attachments
Harmful attachments are often described in Buddhist literature as impediments or hindrances because they block our view of the truth and prevent us from seeing our own Buddha nature. Read more