Prayers and Practices for the Deceased

Prayers and Practices for the Deceased

Offering a Deceased Person’s Wealth
Date Posted:
October 2005

Rinpoche gave the following advice on how to dispose of a person’s wealth after death.

Traditionally, as soon as the person’s breath has stopped, the person’s wealth is offered to his or her gurus.

Another thing that is traditionally done when somebody dies is to make light offerings. According to how wealthy the person is, you can offer any amount of lights: 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, or more. Every day, up until 49 days after the person’s passing away, you can make light offerings. Or, you can make light offerings at the end of each week, using the practice for offering lights that I have composed.

If you are just doing the light offering practice, you can recite the prayers in that practice. However, if you are making extensive light offerings, you can use Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga or the Guru Puja, and make the offering during the offering section of the seven limb prayer, or at the beginning when you make the preliminary offerings. If you are making light offerings with other sadhanas, offer them when you come to the practice of the seven-limb prayer, in the part for offerings. If you are performing Chenrezig practice, which is the same as the nyung nä practice, there is a section for extensive offerings, and you can practice the meditation at that time.

One should perform the blessing when one is actually lighting the offerings. That is part of the normal practice. Before you do the extensive offering meditation, whenever you do group practice or when you perform a sadhana, it is good to recite the mantra of clouds of offerings. Even if there is only one light offering, numberless buddhas receive numberless light offerings. The Guru Puja merit field receives numberless light offerings. That mantra has the power not only to bless, but also to increase the offerings. It is very important to perform light offerings when somebody has passed away.

This is the minimum that can be done. But if somebody has more money, or people want to sponsor a puja for the person who died, there is the Namgyalma thousand-offering puja, and the middle and long Medicine Buddha pujas, which are extremely good to do, with many offerings. These pujas can be done at the end of each week, and especially at the end of the 49 days. They can be done in a Sangha community, and if there is enough money, the pujas can be sponsored and be performed in monasteries where there are many monks or nuns. This way, by making offerings to more Sangha, it collects more merit. You can request monasteries to perform these pujas. There is so much merit in making offerings to Sangha, as long as they are living according to their vows, especially the fully ordained. When money is offered to me after someone has died, I use it for pujas, to build stupas and prayer wheels, etc.

If you offer to the monastery by thinking that you are offering to the pores of your own guru, remembering your guru, you collect extensive merit. Any amount offered to all the ten directions’ Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and to the ten directions’ statues, stupas, and scriptures collects extensive merit.

Whatever money or property a person has, it is extremely good to use it for public service, in order to build monasteries, temples, centers, holy objects, and to support Western Sangha. That can make it most beneficial. Of course, the same applies to offering to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. If the offering is given to build holy objects, temples, or monasteries, whatever amount is given—$1, $5, $10—generates so much merit.

There is a story that just by offering a drink, one is born as a king in the human world. I think there was a very poor couple who offered medicinal drinks to some Sangha and they were reborn as kings in the place called Gashika, with an incredible amount of power. For millions of eons they were never poor through having offered food and drink. And that’s just concerning temporary happiness, without even mentioning ultimate happiness. One will receive so much happiness in all those lifetimes.

It is the same when building or buying a Dharma center, a hall for the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and for all sentient beings—a place for sentient beings to meet the Dharma, the unmistaken path to happiness. Through the unmistaken method, they can achieve future happiness, and more important, everlasting happiness, liberation from samsara, and most importantly, full enlightenment. This way, there is the deepest benefit by eliminating the root of suffering, which is deeply rooted in their minds. Nothing else can do that except Dharma,. Without Dharma, they will suffer without end. Even if they try to achieve happiness by other means, the happiness they achieve will be only temporary, and is actually in the nature of suffering. Creating the facilities for sentient beings to meet and practice Dharma brings them to the cessation of suffering and to enlightenment.

What to Do with a Deceased Person’s Ashes
Date Posted:
October 2005

Rinpoche gave the following instructions on what to do with a deceased person’s ashes, to be of maximum benefit for them.

For your mother, it would be good to recite the mantra OM MANI PADME HUM or the Medicine Buddha mantra many times, then blow on her body to purify her, and to protect her from the lower realms. You can also practice Medicine Buddha meditation for your mother’s liberation.

After the cremation, the ashes need to be blessed through the puja jang-wa. Once jang-wa has been performed with some of the hair or bone of the person, for purification of negative karma and for the person’s liberation, then the ashes, hair, or bone can be put inside a stupa. Jang-wa is a very powerful tantric puja performed to transfer the person’s consciousness into higher realms, such as pure lands. Through jang-wa, the person’s ashes, hair, bones, or other physical remains are blessed and actually become holy objects, and so can be placed in holy objects like stupas and statues. This becomes highly beneficial for the person who died, and for the family or friends left behind, because every time they pay respects to the deceased by making offerings such as flowers or lights to the stupa or statue, they create a lot of merit. Doing jang-wa for your mother would also create extensive merit for those she left behind that are doing the puja or rejoicing in having it done.

There are many good geshes who have a good understanding of Dharma, the entire path to enlightenment. The ashes can be divided for different geshes to bless, or just one geshe can do it; it doesn’t matter. But the more times the ashes are blessed, the more benefit there is for the person who died.

After jang-wa has been done, if possible, a lot of the ashes should be put in the ocean, because when they are blessed, they become like relics. When the ashes are put in the ocean, all the animals are purified of their negative karma for the next rebirth and future rebirths. This is mentioned in the jang-wa text, which also mentions throwing the ashes into the wind on top of a high mountain, so that all the insects and other sentient beings who are touched by the ashes will be liberated. I think putting them in the ocean would be better, because there are so many more sentient beings there. You can also sprinkle them on the ground where there are many insects.

A small amount of the ashes can be placed in the base of a stupa. The person who has died will receive all the merit from having the stupa dedicated to them. At Land of Medicine Buddha retreat center in California, there is a temple to house stupas with people’s ashes in them.

Some people say that you can’t put the ashes of ordinary beings inside a stupa, and that this is very heavy negative karma, but this is not a well-analyzed thought. If the ashes are purified and blessed by a good meditator, with good concentration, the ashes can be put inside a stupa, and circumambulated. Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche says this is OK, and it is also mentioned in the text itself.

In case people have superstitious thoughts about not wanting to circumambulate a stupa with ashes in it, then put the ashes in the base of the stupa and not the stupa itself. It will make it easier for people with those thoughts to circumambulate and worship the stupa.

I suggest that a tsa-tsa stupa can be made at the end of each week for the person. One, two, or three stupas can be made, but at least one. Then the stupas can be filled with the four different mantras that I have copied from the Kangyur or Tengyur. They have so much benefit, and incredible power. It makes the stupa or statue so powerful for people who are worshipping or circumambulating it. There is one mantra called the Stainless Beam Deity’s Mantra. If you circumambulate a stupa or tsa-tsa with one of these mantras in it one time, it has the power to purify the heavy negative karma that causes one to be reborn in all the eight hot hells. This is just from one mantra, and it is possible to fit many of these mantras inside one stupa. The more mantras there are in the statue or stupa, the more powerful it becomes.

I will also be saying prayers for your mother.

Pages