Tibetan Butter lamp

Description

This painting is about Butter lamp. The light from the flame of the Butter Lamp symbolizes the wisdom of the awakened mind, dispelling the darkness of delusion and mental obscurations.

 Butter Lamps are used in nearly every Tibetan temple, household, and altar. They are traditionally burned with ghee butter. Butter Lamps are normally made of silver, brass, copper or white metal.

Offering Butter Lamps is the most powerful offering because their light symbolizes wisdom. Just as a lamp dispels darkness, offering light from a Butter Lamp represents removing the darkness of ignorance in order to attain Buddha’s luminous clear wisdom.

The lamp offering is a sense offering to Buddha’s eyes. Because Buddha’s eyes are wisdom eyes, they do not have the extremes of clarity or non – clarity. Our ordinary eyes, however, are obscured by the darkness of the two defilements – gross afflictive emotional defilements and subtle habitual defilements.

While the Buddha does not have the desire for offerings, we make offerings for the purpose of our own accumulation of merit and wisdom. Through the power of this accumulation, we can remove the cataracts of our ignorance eyes in order to gain Buddha’s supreme luminous wisdom eyes.

When we offer light, the results are the realization of Clear Light wisdom phenomena in this life; the clarification of dualistic mind and the dispersal of confusion and realization of Clear Light in the Bardo; and the increase of wisdom in each lifetime until one has reached enlightenment.