Food Offering Ceremony

On July 20th, 2025, Compassionate Service Society organized a gathering with a Food Offering Ceremony on the occasion of the 100th day Memorial of sister Katherine Kim Liên Nguyễn. Sister Katherine was a very active and dedicated member of CSS and her life was an inspiration to other volunteers. Her heart went out to all who suffers and always try to think of way to help others. 170 persons attended the ceremony and 115 dishes were prepared by attendees as offering to sister Kim Liên.

Below is the summarization of the talk given by Venerable Hằng Trường before the Food Offering ceremony.

We had shown our love and appreciation by preparing and decorating the dishes. Now comes the time of the ceremony.

This ceremony is very special because it is not meant to make offerings to the Buddha, but to someone we love. Hence we need to handle the offerings with a lot of gentleness. And the mantra that you will learn is the Blue Lotus Mantra. At the sound ‘Hum’, please give the offering to the person next to you. At the sound ‘Pan Ja’, that person will take it over. And what do you do when the food is very delicious? Even if the food is so delicious and tempting, please pass it on. :)

Here is the practice.

During the ceremony, we keep passing the dishes and remember that:

• Our job is to pass on the goodness, not look at people's faults and mistakes but keep passing on the beauty. We may not be beautiful and yet we praise all beauties. We might not be a saint but like the saying ‘I recognize the goodness in you’, we recognize goodness in others though we may not be very good.

  
  

• The time in between passing dishes, we hold the offering in our hands and we have time to reflect. Even this very short time of reflection is good. That moment of reflection is the moment when we look in at ourselves, we look at the world, or we look at the offering and think about the person we make offering to. 

• If we look at the flow of the offerings from the table at the end of the room to the front of the room, we realize that to be with someone, we should bring that person from the shore of ignorance to the shore of enlightenment, without any sense of self and egocentrism, while always reflect upon ourselves. 

• Let the transitions always be perfect because there is no attachment to anything. We have something in hands, and then we let go of it. But before letting go, make sure someone takes it up. 

The is a very deep meditation practice. 

Think about it for a moment:  Can you be with someone, recognize the goodness in that person, forgive all the times that you got hurt by that person, and keep moving on? Can you bring that person to the other side, the shore of joy and happiness and yet, take a fraction of time to reflect upon your egocentrism?

A very deep meditation practice indeed.

The message is a message of love. The practice is a practice of love.

Each of us is a ferryman. With a boat we ferry people from one shore to the other shore without any judgment of the one sitting in that boat. 

I hope that you enjoy this ceremony.  It will take a little bit of time for all the foods on that table there to come all the way up here. It's not going to be very fast.