Tibetan Buddha Dharma Meal Prayer

Alternative Meal Prayer

This food is the gift of the whole universe,
Each morsel is a sacrifice of life,
May I be worthy to receive it.
May the energy in this food,
Give me the strength,
To transform my unwholesome qualities
into wholesome ones.
I am grateful for this food,
May I realize the Path of Awakening,
For the sake of all beings.
The joys and pains of all beings
are present in the gift of this food.
Let us receive it in love
and gratitude…
And in mindfulness of our sisters and brothers
among living beings of every kind
who are hungry or without a home

~

Offering Charity to Sentient Beings

Offering charity of the food to the numberless beings in the multitude of realms and believe that they are fully satisfied and generate the complete path to enlightenment in their mind. Every one of them becomes enlightened in the aspect of the Buddha.

For the sentient beings in one’s own body
Dedicate every spoonful of food and mouthful of drink to all sentient beings, including the 21,000 beings living in your body. In this way, you make a connection with all sentient beings and when they become human in future lives, you can reveal the Dharma to them and lead them to enlightenment. This way, eating is done with a bodhichitta motivation, thereby becoming a cause for achieving enlightenment.

~

Meditation on Emptiness

I, the action of offering, making charity, performing the yoga of eating; as well as Buddha, Dharma, Sangha and sentient beings – all those for whom I am doing all these practices; all these are merely labeled by mind. They exist in mere name, merely labeled by mind. I does not exist from its own side; it is empty. All these actions do not exist from their own side; they are empty. All the members of the merit field, they exist but they do not exist from their own side; they are empty. Sentient beings exist but they don’t exist from their own side; they are empty.