Sang Offering Visualization and Meaning

What you want to realize the basis on which sang is based: by making illusory offerings through illusory practice you gather illusory accumulations. You cause illusory geywa. From that the illusory result which is the perfection of wisdom arises. There are many kinds of illusory visualized offerings. They are used to pacify obstacles. There are obstacles that keep the Dharma from awakening in this lifetime. Obstacles can be poverty, distraction, compulsion to go play video games, or to watch strange YouTube. All sorts of obstacles do arise. 

It’s important to make the offering as gracefully as you are capable. You coordinate body, speech, and mind. You pay attention in the moment. This practice is keyrim. It accumulates geywa. It creates geywa. You create geywa and it changes the world. It begins with taking refuge and arising Bodhichitta, as should any practice that you do. Wishing that as a result of the geywa created all beings attain perfect awakening. You do it visualizing yourself in the form of your Yidam. If you do not have a Yidam it is good to use Chenrezig. There is a lot of visualization in sang, it is not just the words.

Mantra Visualizations:

From the blue HUNG in your heart, there appears a dark red syllable RAM that burns the sang offering. It purifies burning away the impurities. From the syllable YAM which also arises and comes out of the dark blue hung in your heart, a great wind arises and scatters the impurities. And from the syllable KHAM which arises from the dark blue hung in your heart, infinite water arises which cleanses impurities. And with this they are purified within the emptiness of the absolute space of the great primordial purity, the Dharmadhatu beyond any conceptualization.

Remember, you are still the Yidam, and these syllables came out of your heart. You visualize yourself as the Yidam. From the heart comes a white OM surrounded with little tigles. Each tigle transforms into a precious vessel as deep and vast as the sea. Spreading out to fill the whole universe inside the white OM representing the essence of the enlightened body of all Buddhas. The red AH, the essence of their enlightened speech and the blue HUNG, the essence of enlightened mind rain down from the absolute sphere beyond time and space; the fourth time. 

Sang Offering Visualizations:

Enter the sang offerings which in essence are emptiness and the immaculate wisdom nectar which liberates upon taste. They take different forms in the perceptions of the various guests. Appearing as beautiful visions, sounds, scents, tastes, touch, riches of enjoyment. They become that. Through the mantra and the mudra they are multiplied. Then from the HUNG in your heart, boundless rays of light shine forth, and we invite the Three Jewels and all Enlightened beings invited out of respect. We invite all the protectors, invited out of their qualities of being protectors. We invite the six classes/realms of beings who are the guests, invited out of compassion. We invite the obstacle making guests, to whom we owe karmic debt. All manifest in physical form out of the absolute space of the Dharmadhatu. They arise filling the universe like bubbles suddenly appearing in water or lightning flashing in the sky. 

We recite the lines for inviting the guests. We consider they appear there before us in a single instant, directly perceptible to our senses. And we request that they take their places. The Supreme Ones, the protectors, and all other beings that hussle inbetween, the obstructing forces to whom we owe karmic debts all of this joins us. Then as we make the offering, we imagine that the deities to whom we offer all receive the substance of the sang in the form of light ways light sun beams striking water. Imbibing them, sipping them through straws shaped like vajras. The straw is Bodhicitta. The smoke goes forth and is spread in the forms that will be enjoyed to the entire world.

Sang Offering Recitation

Refuge Prayer

I take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.

I take refuge in the teacher, the archetype, and the dakinis.

I take refuge in the channels, qi, and drops of life force essence.

I take refuge in the Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanikaya.

In the true nature of my own mind emptiness-clarity, I take refuge. 

3 times

Generating Bodhichitta

In the ground of the luminous tigle of supremely secret wisdom,

May the three obscurations of all beings be purified, and

With the four visions spontaneously perfected in the tigle of the wisdom body, speech and mind,

May all being be liberated into the youthful vase body! For this, I generate the heart and mind of Bodhichitta.

3 times

Brief Sang Offering 

by Mipham Rinpoche

Ram Yam Kham

Say each mantra syllable with appropriate mudra for fire, wind, and water.

Ho! With this smoke offering, in great clouds like those of Samantabhadra,

We sanctify the guru, yidam deity, buddhas and bodhisattvas,

We sanctify the vīras, ḍākinīs, dharma protectors and wealth deities,

We sanctify the warrior spirits, wermas, regional deities and treasure-keepers,

We sanctify all the personal gods and powerful guardians,

We sanctify the outer environment and its inhabitants into vast purity.

And we offer a sky-treasury of inexhaustible sensory delights.

Let everything be auspicious so that hindrances are pacified and all our wishes spontaneously fulfilled!

Om Ah Hung

Repeat mantra

The one called Mipham composed this in Thrangu hermitage on the fourth day of the seventh month of the Wood Snake year (1905). May virtue abound!

Dedication

Through the positivity and merit of this, may all beings

Complete the accumulation of merit and wisdom,

And from this merit and wisdom,

May they attain the dharmakāya and rūpakāya, for the benefit of self and others!