Offering rituals
Offering rituals come in many different forms, from placing offering cakes (Tib. torma) on an altar, toblessings of sacred objects (Tib. rabne), dance rituals, feast-offerings (Tib. tsog) and fire-pujas, toname but a few.
Offering Cakes or Tormas
(Tib.) contain several substances with their own symbolic meaning. InIndia, this offering traditionally contained three sweet substances: molasses, honey and sugar and threewhite substances: curd, butter and milk. In Tibet, these would be mixed with tsampa or parched barleyflour to make an offering cake. For specific practices, grains, alcohol, meat, or medicine may beadded. Adding five types of grains is believed to overcome poverty andfamine, while the 6 medicinal aromatics are thought to overcome illness and epidemics. Tormas can have many different shapes, again related to theirspecific purpose. For example, typical stepped, pyramid shaped tormas arespecific to wrathful deities with wavy outer lines representing smoke andflames. The colour of these sometimes match the colour of the attending deity.Cakes for peaceful deities often contain round shapes.
The tormas aretraditionally decorated with sculptures made of butter and colorants. Forsome occasions, a cross of coloured threads, believed to have beenintroduced by Guru Rinpoche, is added to the torma. Two wooden sticks are bound together in theshape of a cross on which coloured threads are woven to create a cobweb-like structure.Tormas can be vary from a simple small clump, to very large and complicated, measuring up to a fewmeters in size. They can be used as devices to which all the evil and sickness of an individual or acommunity are transferred and thereby eliminated. Every year in many of the temples, monasteries anddzongs the ritual of "casting away torma" is performed on the twenty-ninth day of the last month of theyear, in some places accompanied by dances. In this way, negativities of the past year can be ended.
Feast Offerings
Tsog (Tib.) or Ganacakra (Skt.) are regarded as an indispensable means forconferring accomplishment and pacifying obstacles. There are three aspects to the feast-offering: thegathering of fortunate practitioners in the feast; the outer, inner and secret sacraments of the ritualwhich are offered and consumed during the feast; and Buddhas - whether actual or visualised - whoreceive the offerings and bring the ritual to its successful conclusion. The overall purpose is todistribute merit and wisdom in the context of a specific tantric ritual.
Fire Pujas
can be as simple as in the Vajra Daka practice (see the page ontantra), or can be veryelaborate, like at the completion of a long tantric retreat. Fire pujas are also held to bless the groundbefore the construction of temples or stupas. Fire offerings can be of different types: peaceful toovercome obstacles and defilements (like usually after a retreat); increasing to expand wealth, wisdomand merit and to gain longevity, controlling to subdue harmful forces; forceful to banish negative forces.
