Master Menzhi@Junior Class Second Period Textbook Jiuhuashan·Daci Zang Temple Master Menzhi Please indicate the source when reposting. What is the best oil to use for the oil lamp in front of the Buddha? Oil lamps in front of the Buddha can include sesame oil lamps, butter lamps, soybean oil lamps, rapeseed oil lamps and other vegetable oil lamps. Never use animal oil to light Buddhist lamps. The best oil for Buddha lamps is sesame oil, which is commonly known as sesame oil. It is the best oil for Buddha lamps. Using sesame oil fried in sesame oil to offer Buddha lamps not only has the merit of offering Buddha wisdom and life, but also has the function of offering fragrance to Buddha. Because the fragrance of sesame oil itself is the most precious and pious fragrance offering, and it also has merit power. Next is ghee (refined from pure milk), followed by soybean oil, rapeseed oil and other vegetable oils. However, pure sesame oil and pure ghee for frying are too expensive and rarely used for a long time. Generally, soybean oil or rapeseed oil is used to light Buddhist lanterns. The oils sold in society specifically for lighting Buddhist lamps include mineral, plant, and synthetic oils. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages. Some have large black smoke and strong odor, while the truly smokeless and odorless ones are more expensive. Therefore, soybean oil and rapeseed oil are generally used to light Buddhist lanterns. They are not only cheap but also more practical. Soybean salad oil and rapeseed salad oil sold in the modern market are moderately priced, of high quality, smokeless and odorless, clear and transparent, and are usually the best oils for Buddhist lamps in temples and ordinary people. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~For all living beings in the Dharma Ending Age, the shadow of bad karma covers everything. Our air is polluted. Is it to blame the air? Air: "I have been like this since ancient times." The water is polluted, is it strange water? Is it created by the karma of us sentient beings? Even our water and our air are filled with the shadow of the Dharma-ending Age. Tell me, do you have any newspapers? Even the air and water are polluted. Is there a TV? Is there any music we listen to? The words we read and the music we listen to are polluted everywhere. Burning incense, candles, and lamp oil are even more fake

Candles either have the smell of mineral wax or chemical fragrance. Firstly, the shape of the dripping wax oil is not solemn, and secondly, the smell of incomplete combustion is not good. Solemn, the third is short burning time, the fourth is easy to extinguish, and the fifth is unfavorable to the solidity of Samadhi, so the effect is slow. Some so-called environmentally friendly lamp oils are actually blended with mineral oil, kerosene, diesel and flavors and pigments. In the Age of Dharma Ending, even incense and candles are fake. It was different in the past. Before the liberation, candles were edible. Now when you go to India, it is still the same. They have those small candles in India, but those candles are extracted from honey and are edible. So beeswax is like propolis and can be eaten. Yes, many pills are made of propolis. In ancient times, waxes were all good, but now they are extracted from petroleum. Mineral waxes are not edible. The black smoke is smoked by others. After three days of coughing, the lungs are still dirty. There is now "environmentally friendly" oil on the market that is specially used to burn Buddha lamps, but its raw material is kerosene. As far as Wei Xue knows, kerosene is derived from complex chemical changes in animal carcasses many, many years ago. So, is it okay for us to use this oil to offer offerings to Buddha? The key point is to order the truly green, environmentally friendly, purely natural, non-chemically synthesized edible vegetable oil ghee lamp. Why do we need to use pure butter lamps for worshiping Buddha? Because offering butter is first of all offering food and at the same time offering light. As long as they are serious disciples of Buddhism and believe in cause and effect, they will not add wax to the food offered to the Buddha! ! ! We firmly believe in cause and effect, so we must be responsible to all our brothers and sisters, and at the same time we are responsible to ourselves! Offerings to Buddha in Tibet are made from the best food, butter extracted from cow's and goat's milk. This shows respect for the Buddha! Animal testing method: One of the simplest methods is to place the butter lamp grains in a location where mice are present and observe. If you find a "butter lamp" that even mice are unwilling to eat (poor-quality butter, ginseng wax and other chemical substances, and the mice are unwilling to eat it), can it still be used as food to offer to the Buddha? It can only be used as an offering to light, which is more consistent with the Dharma. (Candles for lighting are the cheapest. They are more than 50% cheaper than wax lamps!! Why spend money on butter lamps?). Soybean salad oil and rapeseed salad oil sold in the modern market. The price is moderate, the quality is good, it is smokeless and odorless, clear and transparent, and it is usually the best oil for Buddhist lamps in temples and ordinary people. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~Excerpted from the Notes on the Merit Sutra of Medicine Master Glazed Light Tathagata's Original Vows (Master Cifa). Nowadays, in our Han temples, we don't pay attention to offerings, that is, lighting lamps. Often, we just light two candles when we go to the temple. That's okay. If there is a constant light, then it is a good temple. If you rarely make offerings, it is just to make offerings to the Buddha. Then, the benefits of the law often do not appear, and it is mostly due to your own karma. By investing your energy, wealth, and life in making offerings, your life, time, and energy will be connected with the Buddha and the Dharma, and your karma will be transformed and your karma will be increased. Forty-nine lamps, burning lamps are particularly important for this type of patients. Nowadays, people often don’t know enough about this place.

In some Tibetan areas, great emphasis is placed on lighting lamps, burning incense, praising and making offerings in the practice of Tantric Dharma. In our mainland, people usually put an apple there. The apple they put there is always rotten and they don't want to take it down. It's just more meaningful like that. When making offerings, they must be respectful and must be clean. All aspects must be solemn and respectful. As long as it's to save your family, you can spend tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. We have lit oil lamps. As a general cause and condition, we light forty-nine lamps. Forty-nine lamps like ours, which can be lit for forty-nine days, may require about three hundred kilograms of oil, or about the same amount. If it can be done, it will be very fuel efficient. Then leave this person alone and just light a lamp, and the oil in the lamp will burn very quickly. If everyone chants praises, the oil will not go out of the lamp. It will always be on, but the oil will not go out. There is nothing magical or exaggerated about this. It is just this. He does have such blessing. His most important thing is to let us abandon our own karma, directly focus on our own karma, and achieve a transformation. Our money will create karma if we do not offer it to the Buddha. There is nothing to say. The main thing is for you to do your best to make offerings, which is to transform your karma into offerings to the Buddha, offerings to perfection, offerings to light, offerings to truth, and offerings. It produces incredible blessings or transforms the flow of karma. This purpose is particularly clear and it is not possible to offer lamps to the Dharma. It will really make the Dharma protector angry! On the contrary, this Dharma protector gave rise to some undue causes and conditions. The Dharma protector is ruthless, he is the Dharma protector, and those who break the Dharma will cause trouble for you. There is nothing to say. So, Buddhism is indeed compassionate, and Dharma protectors are ruthless. Why are they ruthless? In order to make more people listen to the Buddha Dharma, to keep the Buddha Dharma alive in the world, and to prevent the Buddha Dharma from being destroyed, he said that if you want to harm the Buddha Dharma, it is normal for him to teach you. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~·~~ Common vegetable oil types Peanut oil: The oil is light yellow in color, has a peanut smell when you smell it, and the oil foam is slightly It is white. Rapeseed oil: Slightly green, with a spicy taste and a yellowish foam. Soybean oil: The oil is dark yellow in color, has a strong beany smell, has an astringent taste, and the oil foam is white. Cottonseed oil: The oil is dark yellow in color, tastes tasteless, and the oil foam turns yellow. Sesame oil: brown-red, has a strong fragrance when smelled and tasted, suitable for seasoning. Sunflower seed oil: clear and transparent in color, fragrant and delicious, and not greasy when cooking. Hydrogenated shortening is derived from the English word "shorten", which means that using this kind of fat to process biscuits and other products can make the products very crispy, so the fat with this property is called "shorten". It refers to refined animal and vegetable oils, hydrogenated oils or mixtures of the above oils, solid oils formed by rapid cooling and kneading, or dynamic oils without rapid cooling and kneading. Shortening has processing properties such as plasticity and emulsification. It is generally not suitable for direct consumption, but is used for processing pastries, bread or fried foods. The properties of shortening are different and the production processes are also different. Palm oil: widely used in cooking and food preparation around the world. It is used as cooking oil, crisp fat and margarine. Like other edible oils, palm oil is easily digested and absorbed to promote human health. Palm oil is an important component of fat. It has mild properties and is a good material for making food. Judging from the composition of brown and blue oil, its high solid glycerin content allows food to avoid hydrogenation and remain stable, and effectively resists oxidation, making it a good condiment for pastries and bakery products in hot climates. Palm oil is favored by the food manufacturing industry due to several properties it possesses. Rapeseed oil: What we commonly call rapeseed oil, also called coriander oil, is a transparent or translucent liquid extracted from the seeds of the cruciferous plant Brassica (rapeseed). Rapeseed oil is golden or brown in color and has a certain pungent smell, which is called "green smell" among the people. This gas is caused by the presence of a certain amount of glucosinolate in it, but premium varieties of rapeseed do not contain this substance. Corn oil: Corn oil is rich in vitamin E and has good thermal stability. Olive oil: rich in unsaturated fatty acids and vitamin E, which can be absorbed by the skin, moisturize and nourish the skin, make the skin shiny, delicate and elastic, promote blood circulation and skin metabolism, help lose weight, reduce wrinkles and delay aging. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ghee is divided into vegetable ghee and yak milk ghee. Strictly speaking, ghee should be called "shortening". Shortening is divided into animal shortening, vegetable shortening, and animal and plant mixed shortening. Vegan shortening is vegetable shortening, which is made from vegetable oil. Whether to buy vegetable ghee or yak milk ghee to offer to the Buddha depends entirely on your own joy. (A lamp of yak milk ghee is 2 to 3 times the price of vegetable ghee) The current situation of butter lamps for Buddha: 1 Now there are formal factory names, and how many ghee products have passed the edible oil certification? There are many fake edible ghee products circulating in the market. It can be seen from various inspection reports that most of the so-called "edible ghee" now is made by illegal people who purchase animal fats that have been used many times and useless fats that are repeatedly fried at low prices and process them.

In order to pursue their own interests, these criminals do not hesitate to deceive everyone by using industrial flavors to cover up odors and industrial pigments to cover up impurities and precipitation in oils. Does anyone know? These raw materials not only contain a large amount of animal fat, but also contain heavy metals such as arsenic and lead that are harmful to the human body, and carcinogens such as aflatoxin and benzopyrene. In order to ensure that people's health is not harmed, the government has also strongly advocated the ban on the use of gutter oil in the catering industry. How can we reprocess the gutter oil that we ourselves cannot eat and use it as an offering to the Buddha? Believers should keep their eyes open and think about why they want to offer lamps in front of the Buddha? How much devotion do you have to the Buddha? If you think about it more, you will not be fooled by fake and inferior products, let alone buy fake products for the sake of temporary gains and support counterfeiting! The above is only about grease. 2. Some manufacturers process the by-products of petroleum refining, or industrial grease, and call it ghee. deceive believers. It is really a sin to use this so-called "ghee" to make Buddhist lamps. Do you know? These harmful greases and chemical products produce toxic gases such as carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulfide that are harmful to the human body during the combustion process, causing chronic poisoning and damaging our health. They also cause serious air pollution to our living environment and temples. Let me ask: We Are you a devout believer still willing to choose these fakes? Will you still support fraud? For the health of you and others, and to protect the environment from damage and pollution, everyone should unite and work together to resist counterfeiting and resist the invasion of fake butter lamps into our pure practice places and thousands of households.