One-A-Day Disciple Offerings
One of the most forgotten requirements for disciples of the Hanmi lineage is to make their One-A-Day Offering (One Dollar/Pound/Euro). Most Christian organizations require members to give 10% of their income. Muslim followers must make their almsgiving, called Zakat, which amounts to 2.5% of their income. The Hanmi lineage only requires disciples to offer One-A-Day, which usually amounts to less than 1% of a practitioner’s income.
For non-disciple practitioners, it’s still helpful to you to make the One-A-Day offering to connect with the dharma lineage and assist with your karmic obstacles.
Why is it important to make your One-A-Day offering? According to Master Yu:
Make offerings and support your Guru. It is the most essential point to make that connection. When you are truly making an offering and supporting your guru, you, in a sense, have complete faith and humility in your guru, and therefore everything about you, your circulation, your breathing, anything that exchanges in your systems; they all calm down.
When you are doing your meditation practice and you feel there is a blockage, some kind bottle neck that you cannot break through, and you are stuck there, then you have to think about the cause, the reason for this is maybe because you have not done the first essential point, or not enough. You do not really have humility and you do not really yet have enough faith in your guru yet.
For example, when you took refuge and became my disciple, most of you are probably aware of this, I have one requirement. I do not ask for a lot of offerings or support from you. I say that because in the Four Preparatory Conducts as an Esoteric practitioner, the number one thing is called “Great Offering” or “Great Sacrifice,” you must make a great vow, make a substantial significant offering to your Guru.
I know that the American lifestyle is a very wasteful lifestyle. And for my American disciples, your habits are such that you waste a lot as you live your daily life. So my requirement for the American disciples is very simple. You want to keep your vows to make offerings to support your Master, it is only a $1 per day.
Let me tell you, there are still disciples outside of Los Angeles areas that are still sticking to it and never gave up, and still make a dollar a day offering to me. Now the Los Angeles disciples have basically completely stopped doing this. When I said this the first time years ago, that I only need an offering of a dollar a day, some people said, that is not a lot of money, “It is too little money, I don’t want to give so little.” It is just a little money, but there are still plenty of disciples who do not even bother.
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What do I need a dollar a day from you for? When you wire it to me the Bank card is in China. This bank card is not in my hand. This bank card is in the hands of Garwa Rinpoche, the throne chair or throne holder of the Sakya Khon lineage. If you get a chance or have the destiny to go visit WenDu monastery in Qing Hai province China, you will see and you will understand.
They have a few hundred Lamas there, close to about 300, the youngest Lama is six years old. Over here, you treat a six year old like a precious little baby. Over there, a six year old has to take care of everything for himself, they are treated as an adult. Every morning at 5 o'clock, whether a six year old Lama or sixty year old Lama, they all get up to go to the main hall to begin their morning chanting lesson. Evenings, they take turns and they continue to do their chanting lesson. Where do they chant in the evening? They all go up to the roof on top of their rooms and you are going to hear the chanting sound going on and off throughout the valley in the monastery.
They all adhere to a very strict discipline, very strict precepts of their practice. I have on-camera, taped, some of their strict discipline, everyone will be treated as an adult and respected as such, even a young Lama, a six year old that breaks a rule, he still will receive his due punishment from the older Lamas. And I taped one of these sessions. All of these Lamas live in poverty because all they do is to practice Dharma.
What do they eat everyday? Autumn and winter times, the surrounding villages, they are basically all farmers, they will support the monks in the monastery. Every morning they will carry baskets of food items up the mountain to the monastery: long doughnuts, bread and, basically just bread. And this is what they eat, okay? They take this food and let it dry. Then they rub this in their hands till it becomes powder form, crushed into pieces, so that they can put this dough in compact space inside big sacks. At 5 o'clock in the morning, everybody goes into the main hall to start morning practice. By 8 am they are done. It takes them three hours to do the morning chant. In the end of the morning practice, they have this bowl. They add a couple of spoons of this crush bread or dough and add water, mix it up, and that is their breakfast. If you are able to treat somebody out for lunch or dinner, the money is enough for them to live off for a year.
So when the first time I visited the WenDu Monastery, the first thing I did was give a robe to each and every Lama there. The second time I visited, I believe E.. and S.. accompanied me to the WenDu Monastery that time, I donated 200,000 RMB to the monastery. E.., do you remember that? Even a dollar a day offering to your master, I do not use it. This goes to an account, and the bank card is in the hands of Garwa Rinpoche. It is for every Lama who sincerely and strictly adheres to their practice of Dharma in that monastery. Do you understand about karma? If your dollar a day goes to these fulltime practicing monks, you will lessen your crimes or sins of wastefulness in your life, this life. And that is a means to accumulate merit for you.
And the surrounding area, the villages and the towns, those are the poorest regions in the whole of China. The schools go from the first grade elementary to the sixth grade elementary. Most people only finish elementary school because they cannot afford to go on to the middle school. All this money goes to help give scholarships to the students, so they may continue their education. All and every disciple that has made this a dollar a day offering, there is a list of names, and it is hanging in the Dharmapala shrine in WenDu monastery. If you stopped your dollar a day offering, you ceased your merit, you did not stop anybody else from continuing on in their own practice. – Living Buddha Dechan Jueren Aug 13, 2006 Los Angeles
To find out more on how to make your One-A-Day offering in USA please
click here. For Europe, click
here.