A LITURGY FOR MAKING

THE DAILY SHRINE OFFERINGS

TOGETHER WITH
SAMANTABHADRA’S
SEVEN-FOLD PRACTICE

COMPOSED BY TONY DUFF

PADMA KARPO TRANSLATION COMMITTEE
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 A LITURGY FOR MAKING
THE DAILY SHRINE OFFERINGS
TOGETHER WITH
SAMANTABHADRA’S
SEVEN-FOLD PRACTICE

COMPOSED BY TONY DUFF

PADMA KARPO TRANSLATION COMMITTEE
This book is intended for free public distribution, however,
the content is copyrighted. For enquiries regarding
permission to reproduce this book or any portion of it, or to
obtain further books, please write to the given address or
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Copyright © 2015 Tony Duff. All rights reserved.

First edition July 2015

Garamond typeface with diacritical marks

Designed and created by Tony Duff

Produced, Printed, and Published by

Padma Karpo Translation Committee
P.O. Box 4957
Kathmandu
NEPAL

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 Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

Liturgy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

iii
 Introduction

Many followers of Great Vehicle Buddhism, for example

followers of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, perform the
ritual of making offerings to the shrine each day. It can be
hard for those with busy lives to stay focussed on the offer-
ings whilst making them. Moreover, those who have not had
a chance to study extensively usually stumble a little, feeling
that they need more substance with the offering than just
filling bowls of water. One way to solve such problems is to
put the practice of making the offerings into a liturgy.

There is a practice called “the seven-fold practice” that is

short and easy to do but potent. It was first taught by
Samantabhadra, the greatest of Shakyamuni Buddha’s bodhi-
satva disciples. He taught it as the opening to a prayer for
developing the excellent conduct of a bodhisatva, so it is also
called “the seven-fold practice of Samantabhadra”. As the
name suggests, the seven-fold practice is a set of seven differ-
ent practices drawn together into one practice that has long
been regarded as something that a Great Vehicle practitioner
should do each day, for it encapsulates seven very important
practices of the Great Vehicle path.

Of the seven practices, the second is offering. It works out

very well to make a liturgy out of the seven-fold practice and

v
vi INTRODUCTION

then to replace the offering section with the daily shrine

offering. The liturgy for the seven-fold practice is very short
and does not make the daily shrine offerings into a time-
consuming affair, something that is important for people
with busy lives. However, it does add structure to the
practice of making the shrine offering, structure that makes
it easier to stay focussed when making the shrine offering and
which makes the practice much more meaningful and potent
than simply making the offerings. Therefore, I wrote a short
but complete liturgy for incorporating the daily shrine
offerings into the seven-fold practice with the thought that it
would be very helpful to those wanting a nice but quick way
to make the daily shrine offerings.

The verses for the liturgy are based on the verses of the seven-
fold practice in Samantabhadra’s Prayer, but are not a copy
of them. The original verses were in Sanskrit and then later
on in Tibetan, and when literally translated into English are
not always easy to recite. Therefore, I have written the
verses out in a way that is easier to recite in English but
without losing any of the meaning of the original verses.

If you would like to see the whole of Samantabhadra’s

prayer, including the actual verses of the seven-fold liturgy,
have a look at our two-volume exposition of Samanta-
bhadra’s prayer. It includes everything you need to know
about the whole prayer including the seven-fold liturgy. It
also gives clear explanations of the different types of offering
and volume II has an especially long and detailed explanation
of all the types of offering used in Buddhist practice. You
can get the details of the books from our web-site, the address
of which is on the publishing data page opposite the contents
page. The two-volume set will be available from September
2015.
 INTRODUCTION vii

Note that this e-book has a binding offset built in so that you
can easily print and bind it if desired.

Lama Tony Duff,

Swayambunath,
Nepal,
July 2015
 A Liturgy for Making the Daily
Shrine Offerings Together with
Samantabhadra’s Seven-fold
Practice

First, clean your room and assemble the materials for making the
offering. Next, if you wish, make three prostrations before the
shrine. Then hold your hands at your heart with your palms
joined whilst saying the following verses.

Say this to take refuge and arouse the enlightenment mind:

I take refuge in the Three Jewels
And arouse the enlightenment mind.
To benefit beings I will do the shrine offerings
Together with the seven limbed practice.

Say this to make a general prostration with all three doors:

There are all the lions of men gone to buddhahood
As many as are in the worlds in every direction;
I prostrate to all of them without exception,
With admiring body, speech, and mind.

1
2 DAILY OFFERINGS WITH THE SEVEN-FOLD PRACTICE

Say this to make a prostration with body:

The forces of prayers for excellent conduct that I’ve made
in the past
Allow me to see with mind all those conquerors actually
before me;
Manifesting bodies as many as the atoms in the worlds,
I prostrate in the greatest way to all those conquerors.

Say this to make a prostration with mind:

I imagine that on a single atom buddhas as many as
Atoms are seated at the centre of buddha sons and
In that way that all the realms of phenomena
In their entirety are filled with conquerors.

Say this to make a prostration with speech:

Those oceans of conquerors whose unending good
qualities
Are worthy of commendation have their good qualities
Expressed with all the intonations of the buddha voice
And I too praise all the ones gone well to ease.

Now, make the offerings to the shrine while keeping all of those
buddhas and their bodhisatva sons in mind. As you make each
offering, say “I offer such and such to you”.

The usual eight offerings derived from Indian culture are: liquid
for drinking; foot water for washing the feet; flowers, incense or
other aromatics to sweeten the air; light; lotions for the body;
foods; and sound. The usual seven offerings are the eight without
the foot water. These come from the Indian way of making
offerings to guests. You can use your common sense to under-
stand the appropriate thing for another culture. For example,
Westerners would not offer foot water but might offer a towel
and bathroom so that the guest can wash and freshen up. Incense
 DAILY OFFERINGS WITH THE SEVEN-FOLD PRACTICE 3

was one of several means used to freshen the air in ancient

Indian houses; in a Western house, the equivalent would be a
pleasant-smelling air freshener or something of that nature.

Some people will also make offerings to one or more protectors.

That should be done here, while asking aloud for their assistance,
and so on.

When you have made the offerings, return to the front of the
shrine and, with your palms again joined at your heart, do the
remaining five of the seven practices.

Say this to lay aside, meaning divorcing yourself from, the

karmically bad deeds you have done in the past:
I lay aside the evils I have done, whether
Under the influence of desire, anger, and delusion,
Whether through body, speech, and likewise mind,
Laying all of them aside, each one individually.

Say this to rejoicing in all merits:

I rejoice in all the merits whoever has them,
Those of all the conquerors of the ten directions and
The buddha sons, of the pratyekabuddhas, of those
In training and not in training, and of all migrators.

Say this to urge those who have become truly complete buddhas
by their attainment of the highest type of enlightenment, enlight-
enment in which there is not the slightest samsaric defilement, to
turn the dharma wheel at all levels, including the highest:
The lamps of the worlds of the ten directions are those
who
Have become buddhas at the enlightenment stage and
gained the undefiled state;
4 DAILY OFFERINGS WITH THE SEVEN-FOLD PRACTICE

I urge all of those guardian buddhas

To turn the unsurpassed wheel of dharma.

Supplicating those lamps of the world not to pass into the final
nirvana but to remain and work unceasingly to bring both
temporal benefit and the ultimate ease of enlightenment to the
beings of the samsaric world:
I also will supplicate with palms joined together those
Who have asserted they will show passage into nirvana
To stay for aeons as many as the atoms in the worlds
In order to bring benefit and ease to all migrators.

Finish with the dedication of the various trifles of merit accumu-

lated through the foregoing seven branch practice which included
making the daily offerings:
I dedicate every trifle of virtue that
I have accumulated in prostrating, offering,
Laying aside, rejoicing, urging, and supplicating
For the purpose of enlightenment.

If you would like to accumulate more merit or if you would like

to create the cause for being able to do such a practice every day
without fail, simply stop there in front of the shrine and take a
minute to reflect on the value of what you have just done and
then truly take deep joy in that. Rejoicing in that way creates the
conditions for the expansion of merit that has been gathered and
also creates a swell of energy for wanting to do such a practice
again.

Composed by the Western Buddhist teacher and translator, Tony

Duff, July 2015. May the value of this translate into truly
complete enlightenment for every being.
 Tony Duff has spent a lifetime pursuing the Buddha’s
teaching and transmitting it to others. In the early
1970's, during his post-graduate studies in molecular
biology, he went to Asia and met the Buddhist teach-
ings of various South-east Asian countries. He met
Tibetan Buddhism in Nepal and has followed it since. After his trip he
abandoned worldly life and was the first monk ordained in his home
country of Australia. Together with several others, he founded the
monastery called Chenrezig Institute for Wisdom Culture where he
studied and practised the Gelugpa teachings for several years under
the guidance of Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa, Geshe Lodan, and Zasep
Tulku. After that, he offered back his ordination and left for the USA
to study the Kagyu teachings with the incomparable Chogyam
Trungpa Rinpoche. Tony was very active in the community and went
through all possible levels of training that were available during his
twelve year stay. He was also a core member of the Nalanda Trans-
lation Committee. After Chogyam Trungpa died, Tony went to live in
Nepal where he worked as the personal translator for Tsoknyi
Rinpoche and also translated for several other well-known teachers.
He also founded and directed the largest Tibetan text preservation
project in Asia, the Drukpa Kagyu Heritage Project, which he oversaw
for eight years. He also established the Padma Karpo Translation
Committee which has produced many fine translations and made
many resources for translators such as the highly acclaimed
Illuminator Tibetan-English Dictionary. After the year 2000, Tony
focussed primarily on obtaining Dzogchen teachings from the best
teachers available, especially within Tibet, and translating and
teaching them. He has received much approval from many teachers
and has been given the titles “lotsawa” and “lama” and been strongly
encouraged by them to teach Westerners. One way he does that is by
producing these fine translations.

PADMA KARPO TRANSLATION COMMITTEE

P.O. Box 4957
Kathmandu
Nepal
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