The Merit of Making Offerings to the Three Jewels Is Immeasurable and Boundless

Among the monastic precepts there is the rule of "one sitting for eating": when the meal is served, one must sit and eat until finished, and upon finishing, rise and leave. If in the middle one stands up to get more rice, or walks around and comes back to continue eating, that is not allowed—one may not go for second or third helpings; once the body stands up, it signifies that the meal is finished. In the Buddha's time, monastics ate one meal a day at midday, because going for alms was very time-consuming, and eating one meal at midday saved a great deal of time for cultivation. If one went for alms two or three times a day, not only would it waste a great deal of time, but one would also be ridiculed by worldly people and non-Buddhists, who would say that monastics spend all day begging for food and eating—gluttonous and without cultivation. Third, eating too much means the stomach and intestines are constantly churning and digesting, the mind is not tranquil (praśama), and cultivation is affected; eating too much also consumes one's own merit, and one's progress on the Path cannot advance. Taking these several factors together, the Saṅgha established the precept of one meal a day at midday.

When monastics go for alms, it is also so that sentient beings have a field of merit to sow, providing sentient beings with the opportunity to cultivate merit and the opportunity to attain liberation. The more sentient beings give, the greater their merit, the more opportunities they have to attain liberation, and the greater the likelihood of liberation. It is not the case that monastics going for alms makes sentient beings poor; on the contrary, sentient beings will become increasingly wealthy and honored. Nor is it the case that because monastics go for alms once every day, Buddhism gradually perishes. The perishing of Buddhism has many factors; the main one is that sentient beings' roots of goodness and merit are becoming fewer and fewer—sentient beings lack the fortune to encounter the Buddhadharma and attain liberation—and coupled with Māra Pāpīyas' destruction of Buddhism, Buddhism inevitably declines day by day and finally perishes. When sentient beings give to monastics, the Buddha's rules do not permit refusal; one must let sentient beings sow merit and reap its fruit. Otherwise, sentient beings, lacking merit, will forever drift through the six realms, poor and suffering. If you yourself have a field of merit to sow, you should also be grateful to the Buddha and the monastics, grateful to the Three Jewels—otherwise, when would you ever attain liberation?

The Buddha said in the sūtras that the merit of making offerings to the Buddha is boundless and immeasurable. In particular, the first meal right after the Buddha attained the Way and the last meal before his parinirvāṇa—if one has the opportunity to make such an offering, that person can attain buddhahood the fastest, surpassing all others. The first meal after the Buddha attained the Way was the goat's milk offered by the shepherdess, and the last meal before the Buddha's parinirvāṇa was offered by the blacksmith Cunda. At that time, an extremely large number of people pleaded with the World-Honored One to offer the Buddha his last meal, but the Buddha did not permit any of them; only when the blacksmith Cunda made his request to offer the meal did the Buddha nod and agree. Then the Buddha gave a prediction (vyākaraṇa) that the blacksmith would become a Buddha. This was because in a past life the Buddha had promised Cunda that he would offer the Buddha his last meal of food and drink at the time of the Buddha's parinirvāṇa. It can be seen that having the karmic opportunity to make offerings to the Buddha and the Three Jewels brings merit beyond conception.