How to Offer Food to Sentient Beings

During festivals and holidays, you can perform the food offering ritual (shishi) for your deceased karmic creditors and family relatives, so they too can have a joyful new year, and also to prevent them from becoming envious and harming you with illness. You can also perform the food offering regularly in ordinary times. After eating, seven grains of rice left at the bottom of the bowl are enough; add a bit of vegetable soup or vegetable leaves and you can perform the offering. The mantras recited for the food offering can all be found in the morning and evening liturgy books.

When performing the food offering, either rice or crumbs of steamed bread will do—just a small pinch is enough. Then it all depends on the power of contemplation (guanxiang). If the contemplation is done well and the mantra's blessing power is strong, the food and drink become extremely abundant; the more there is, the more sentient beings benefit, the greater the wholesome karmic affinity formed, and the greater the future merit. A bit of rice the size of a little finger with some vegetable soup will do, or even just seven grains of rice are enough. That is all the material needed—the rest relies entirely on contemplation. Place the pinched-together rice crumbs on a platform outside the house; a balcony works too. Then recite the mantra aloud, and the ghosts and spirits will come to receive the food. The mantra is as follows: "O assembly of ghosts and spirits, I now make this offering to you; may this food pervade the ten directions, to be shared by all ghosts and spirits" (recite once). "Oṃ, mu li ling, svāhā" (recite seven times). While reciting, contemplate: contemplate that the food and drink being offered are endowed with perfect color, fragrance, and taste, pervading the Saha world, pervading all the great mountains, pervading the foot of the mountains, pervading the riverbanks, pervading the shores of the four great oceans, and all the places beneath Mount Sumeru. The larger the area you can contemplate, the better; the more the food and drink can multiply, the better. In 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 of water after washing the dishes after a meal—a mixture of rice water and vegetable water—can also be offered to ghosts and spirits. Recite the mantra seven times with contemplation, and all ghosts and spirits will be able to eat and drink their fill. Splash the dish-washing water onto a platform—anywhere is fine except around peach trees or pomegranate trees. The mantra is as follows: "With this dish-washing water, tasting like heavenly nectar, I offer it to all ghosts and spirits, that all may be fully satiated." Then contemplate that the dish-washing water, like the nectar of heaven, pervades the high mountains and great seas of the Saha world and all the open spaces, while reciting the mantra seven times: "Oṃ, mo xiu la xi, svāhā," and at the same time splashing the dish-washing water, splashing it out in seven portions.

People whose bodies are too weak are easily bullied by ghosts. If your contemplation is not done well and the ghosts and spirits cannot eat, they will give rise to anger and seek 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 contemplation is strong, you may perform it then.

Our fathers, mothers, family members, and relatives from beginningless kalpa upon beginningless kalpa are beyond counting in number. The vast majority of them are in the three evil destinies, mainly in the ghost destiny, 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 fingertip's worth of food and drink is enough to fill their bellies. For the sake of those vast numbers of suffering sentient beings, giving away the food and drink we waste each 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 now have hope of liberation through studying Buddhism, but there are still so many suffering sentient beings—especially those with karmic affinity to us, our parents from beginningless kalpas, and those beings we ourselves have harmed—whose suffering is too great. We should frequently dedicate merit (pariṇāmanā) to them, reciting as many sutras and mantras as we can and cultivating goodness to dedicate to them. Every good deed we do, we should keep in mind 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 destinies; obtaining a human body, they will have the opportunity to encounter the Buddhadharma, learn and practice the methods, and gradually walk out of the cycle of rebirth. In this way, we have in effect rescued sentient beings as well.