The Preliminary Practice of Altar Set-up and Water Bowl Offerings

Setting up an altar and making offerings are an integral part of the preliminary practices taught by Buddha to enable us to engage in successful meditation. By doing this practice daily, our minds become ripe for realizations. This short text provides a complete explanation of how to set up a personal altar, how to make water bowl offerings, and how to offer them in the most extensive and beneficial way.

This edition includes additional information on water bowls, meditations to use while doing the practice, and a mantra to recite when removing food offerings from the altar to avoid creating the karma of stealing from the Triple Gem.

Contents Include:
- Altar Set-up and Water Bowl Offerings
- The Practice of Offering by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
- Guidelines for Completing 100,000 Water Bowl Offerings
- Extensive Offering Practice
- Light Offering Prayer by Lama Atisha
- Appendix: How to Fill a Small Statue

40 pages, 2016 edition.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche was born in 1946 in Thami, in the Mount Everest region of Nepal, not far from the Lawudo cave where his predecessor had meditated for the last 20 years of his life. Lama Zopa Rinpoche is now the Spiritual Director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition and oversees all of its activities.