Offering Lamp

“The lamp vessel, visualized as greater than the universe, with a wick as high as the tallest mountain, and oil as vast as the ocean, is offered to the buddhas and bodhisattvas as the representation of the light of wisdom and dedicated to the awakening of countless beings.”

Offering lamps are traditionally placed as the fifth outer offering. The light of the lamp represents the dispelling of confusion and the illumination of wisdom. By offering butter lamps, we create the circumstances to purify negative karma and accumulate vast positive merit.

The Lamp Aspiration by Mipham Rinpoche, a short prayer of aspiration to accompany the offering of a butter lamp, beautifully states:

This illuminating lamp of original pure awareness
I offer to the maṇḍala deities of Vidyādhara Padmakara.
May all beings, my mothers, wherever awareness pervades,
attain the dharmakāya level of aware emptiness.