How to Give Food to Sentient Beings

During New Year and festival times, you can perform food offerings (for hungry ghosts) to your deceased karmic creditors and family relatives, so that they too can have a joyful New Year, and also to prevent them from becoming envious and making you sick. You can also perform food offerings on a regular basis in ordinary times. After finishing a meal, seven grains of rice left at the bottom of the bowl are enough; add a little vegetable soup and some vegetable leaves, and you can perform the food offering. The mantras recited for food offerings can all be found in the morning and evening liturgy books.

When performing the food offering, rice or crumbs of steamed bread will do—a small pinch is enough. Then it all depends on the power of visualization. If the visualization is done well and the blessing power of the mantra is strong, the food and drink will become extremely abundant; the more there is, the more sentient beings benefit, the greater the wholesome karmic connections formed, and the greater the merit in the future. A bit of rice the size of a little finger with some vegetable soup will do, or even seven grains of rice are enough. That is all the material you need—the rest relies entirely on visualization. Place the pinched-together rice crumbs on a platform outside the house; a balcony also works. Then recite the mantra aloud, and the ghosts and spirits will come to receive the food. The mantra is as follows: "All you hosts of ghosts and spirits, I now make this offering to you; may this food pervade the ten directions, shared by all ghosts and spirits" (recite once). Oṃ, muli-liṅ, svāhā (recite seven times). While reciting, visualize that the food and drink being offered are endowed with perfect form, aroma, and taste, pervading the Sahā world, pervading all the great mountains, pervading the foot of the mountains, pervading the riverbanks, pervading the shores of the four great oceans, as well as all the places around Mount Sumeru. The larger the area you can visualize, the better; the more the food and drink can multiply, the better—this way, more sentient beings are rescued. After reciting the mantra seven times, snap your fingers three times, and the food offering is complete.

You can also offer rice-water to sentient beings. The first rinse water after washing the dishes following a meal—a mixture of rice water and vegetable water—can also be offered to the ghosts and spirits. Recite the mantra seven times with visualization, and all the ghosts and spirits will be able to eat and drink their fill. Pour the dish-washing water onto a platform; anywhere is fine as long as it is not around peach trees or pomegranate trees. The mantra is as follows: "With this dish-washing water, like heavenly nectar in flavor, I offer it to all ghosts and spirits, may they all be fully satiated." Then visualize the dish-washing water, like the nectar of the heavens, pervading the high mountains and the shores of the great seas of the Sahā world, and all the open spaces, while reciting the mantra seven times: Oṃ, maxiu-laxi, svāhā, and at the same time pour out the dish-washing water, splashing it out in seven portions.

People whose bodies are very weak are easily bullied by ghosts. If the visualization is not done well and the ghosts and spirits cannot get the food, they may give rise to anger and take revenge, making you feel unwell for a couple of days. If you are afraid, then do not perform the food offering; practice for a while, and once your power of visualization is strong, you can perform it then.

Our fathers and mothers, family members, and relatives from beginningless kalpas upon beginningless kalpas are beyond counting in number. The vast majority of them are in the three evil paths, mainly in the ghost path, all undergoing suffering, without food and drink or clothing to use. Yet we eat so well every day and still waste food. Saving up just a tiny finger's worth of food and drink is enough to fill their stomachs. For the sake of those vast numbers of suffering sentient beings, giving away the food and drink we waste every day benefits both ourselves and sentient beings, and is also an act of filial devotion and repayment to our parents and teachers of past lives. We ourselves have now studied Buddhism and have hope for liberation, but there are still so many sentient beings suffering hardship, especially those with karmic connections to us—our parents from beginningless kalpas, and also those beings we have harmed—they are suffering so terribly. We should frequently dedicate merit (pariṇāma) to them, reciting as many sutras and mantras as we can and cultivating as much goodness as possible to dedicate to them. Every good deed we do, we should remember to dedicate to them. When their merit increases to a certain degree, they will have the opportunity to escape the ocean of suffering of the three evil paths; obtaining a human body, they will have the opportunity to encounter the Buddhadharma, learn and practice the methods, and gradually walk out of saṃsāra—in this way, we have also, in effect, rescued and delivered sentient beings.