Sponsoring Butter Lamps

Offering lamps can dispel all darknesses. ~ Avatamsaka Sutra

Sponsoring butter lamps is a traditional way to accumulate merit in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Light can be offered for those who are ill, for ourselves when we need support, or to put energy behind our aspirations for the world, such as the end to the suffering of war, pandemics, or famine. Many offer candles for the recently deceased to assist their 49-day journey through the bardo.

If you wish to send a prayer to accompany your offering, please email it here and Lama Losang will add it to our shrine.

In the Tune of Brahma, Shakyamuni Buddha mentioned ten benefits of offering lights:

  • One becomes like the light of the world.
  • One achieves clairvoyance of the pure eye as a human.
  • One achieves the deva’s eye.
  • One receives the wisdom to discriminate virtue from non-virtue.
  • One is able to eliminate the darkness of ignorance, the concept of inherent existence.
  • One receives the illumination of wisdom.
  • One is reborn in the human or deva realms.
  • One receives great enjoyment and wealth.
  • One quickly becomes liberated. One quickly attains enlightenment.