What it Means to Offer a Mandala The mandala offering is an extremely powerful method to quickly accumulate extensive merit and receive realizations such as bodhichitta and emptiness. Just as great strength is needed to carry a heavy load, a great amount of merit is needed to lead all sentient beings to enlightenment, and we can offer nothing more meritorious than a mandala. The Sanskrit term mandala means "circle." In Tibetan it is kyilkhor, "taking the essence"; kyil literally means "center" but it refers to the essence, and khor means "taking." So, while mandala, or kyilkhor, could be translated literally as "being around the center," the actual meaning is "taking the essence." What is that essence? It is bodhichitta. People will go to a big supermarket crowded with all sorts of things rather than a small store that is practically empty because they can get what they need there. So, kyil, the essence, could refer to what we need and want, and khor to being able to take it, "taking what is essential.

" The essence we take is the whole path from guru devotion to enlightenment. By doing this practice we receive inconceivable temporal and ultimate happiness. To offer a mandala, we visualize the entire universe--the worlds and the beings that inhabit those worlds--and we offer it to the merit field, the collection of holy beings we have visualized in front of us. With the practice of offering mandala, by attaining the greatest possible merit, we are able to generate the essential realizations of both the method and wisdom sides of the sutra path as well as the essential realizations of the tantric path. We offer all the worlds, even though generally they are filled with suffering. Offering mandala, we skillfully transform those suffering worlds in order to accumulate incredible merit. In this way, no matter how many worlds there are, they become places for accomplishing everlasting happiness. Similarly, our body is impure and its nature is suffering, and if we utilize it to accumulate negative karma, it becomes a field from where suffering arises.

However, if we transform it into the form of a mandala and offer it, it becomes a field from where temporal and ultimate happiness arise. Therefore, offering mandala is an essential practice. It is essential for anybody who wishes to attain any realization on the spiritual path. It is essential not just for meditators striving to achieve realizations of renunciation, bodhichitta, and emptiness, but even highly realized beings who have attained the generation stage, the first of the two stages of highest yoga tantra.[1] We therefore obviously should do this practice. Once we have received an initiation, if we do not keep offering mandalas until we have reached the completion stage, the second of the two stages, there is danger of receiving life hindrances from spirits--yet another reason why offering mandala is a vital practice.