30/05/2026
Here is a bit more extensive explains of Saka Dawa and suggestions for good actions and the specific (and inspiring)benefits of offering butter lamps 🙂.
As we begin the 3 most holy days of Saka Dawa month, we want to wish all of our dharma sisters and brothers around the world a very blessed month. Also known as hundred--fold, or multiplying days, we encourage you to take this blessed time to heart: follow your teachers' advice, practice restraints and givings for the benefit of yourselves and all beings in this world that is so fraught with suffering and sorrow. Immeasurable virtues and merits can be gathered during this time with good motivation. "The merit of any good deeds that you perform during this time are considered to be multiplied many times over — by as much as one hundred thousand times” — so it is an excellent time to dedicate ourselves to all kinds of spiritually positive actions. We encourage you, our dear friends and supporters, to try to make donations, offerings and dedications during these holiest of days, either to our monastery or to your local dharma centers, temples or favorite charities. Done with good motivation, wishing for liberation for yourselves and others will create vast amounts of merit.
Saka Dawa (Dawa means “month” in Tibetan and the term Saka comes from Tibetan astrology, and the Saka star, which is associated with the full moon of the fourth lunar month) is the most sacred of Tibetan Buddhist holidays, the date most commonly associated with not ony the birth (actually the entry into his mother's womb), as well as the enlightenment and the parinirvana (word commonly used to refer to nirvana-after-death, which occurs upon the death of the body of someone who has attained nirvana during his or her lifetime) of the Buddha Shakyamuni.
Some good actions that are commonly performed to accumulate merit during Saka Dawa month, especially on the 15th day, are:
Refraining from eating meat
Offering donations to monasteries or nunneries, or to individual monks or nuns
Praying and reciting mantras (such as the refuge prayer, the mantra of Avalokiteshvara (Om Mani Padme Hum), or the Buddha Shakyamuni mantra (Om Muni Muni Maha Muniye Soha)
Making prostrations around holy sites
Giving money to beggars
Lighting butter lamps
Making pilgrimages to holy places
Buying animals that are going to be killed and releasing them. (Fish, for example, or insects that are sold as bait or food)
Circumambulating around stupas or other holy places. (Basically this means walking clockwise around a holy site while praying or reciting mantras.)
It is very common as well to take the eight Mahayana precepts for twenty-four, forty-eight or seventy-two hours during Saka Dawa, especially on either the full moon day or new moon day – the 15th day or the 30th day of Saka Dawa. The full moon day is considered to be more powerful for the accumulation of merit. Some monks and practitioners will observe these precepts for the entire month, The eight precepts are:
*Avoid killing, directly or indirectly. Avoid stealing and taking things without the permission of their owner.
*Avoid sexual contact.
*Avoid lying and deceiving others.
*Avoid intoxicants: alcohol, to***co and recreational drugs.
*Avoid eating more than one meal that day.
*Avoid sitting on a high, expensive bed or seat with pride. Also avoid sitting on animal skins.
*Avoid wearing jewelry, perfume, and make-up. Avoid singing, dancing or playing music with attachment.
By refraining from food and drink and taking the suffering of hunger and thirst, we can think “may I purify all negative created to those beings born as a hungry ghost and may the karma of those living as hungry ghosts now be swiftly purified.” Some practitioners will not even swallow during this 24 hour period and keep a jar to spit in. We also observe silence and we can think “by this may I purify all negative karma of speech that I have created to be born in lower realms, and may the karma of those living in lower realms now be swiftly purified.” We make extensive prostrations on this day and think “by this may I purify all negative actions created by body, speech and mind that will cause rebirth in lower realms, and may the karma of those living in lower realms now be swiftly purified.”
Done with good motivation, wishing for liberation for ourselves and others will create vast amounts of merit.
If anyone would like to make offerings during this time the most common are butter lamps during Saka Dawa. Suggested offering is $3.00 for small, $5 for medium, and $10 for large
https://segyugadenphodrang.org/general-donations/Or you may use your paypal directly:
paypal.me/SumatiGadenPreservat
Why butter lamps are so amazing to offer!
There are 10 specific benefits to offering butter lamps or lights:
*One becomes like the light of the world.
*One achieves clairvoyance of the pure eye as a human.
*One achieves the deva's eye.
*One receives the wisdom to discriminate virtue from non-virtue.
*One is able to eliminate the concept of inherent existence.
*One receives the illumination of wisdom.
*One is reborn as a human or deva.
*One receives great enjoyment and wealth.
*One quickly becomes liberated.
*One quickly attains enlightenment.
--Lord Buddha, The Tune of Brahma
