Offer morning and evening incense on a daily basis.
Change the water, fruit, and flowers on the altar. You need to change the water before lighting up the oil lamp for morning incense. If the fruit and flowers started to spoil and wither, you should also change them beforehand. You can pour the Great Compassion Water and the sacred water into your own cups. You mustn’t touch the water cups of Bodhisattvas with your lips. You may then fill the water cups with boiled water, cooled boiled water or spring water (from a bottle).
Turn on the electric lotus lamps, light up the oil lamps and the incense with the oil lamps. Morning incense can be offered after 5 am, normally at 6 am, 8 am, 10 am or 12 pm. Evening incense may be offered at 4 pm, 6 pm, 8 pm, or 10 pm. The last incense must not be offered after 10 pm. You may decide a fixed time to offer incense based on your time schedule. If you have only one incense burner on the altar due to limited space, you should offer three incense sticks in the morning and evening. You should insert the three incense sticks into the burner together. If there are more than one incense burner on the altar, you may offer one incense stick to each Bodhisattva or three on special days such as the 1st and 15th days of every lunar month and on Buddhas’ and Bodhisattvas’ birthdays. You may also offer Grand Incense on those days after the regular incense offering.
Perform kneeling prostrations. You may perform one or three prostrations to each Bodhisattva or 7 or 13 prostrations in total. The order in which you make prostrations is: Namo the Greatly Merciful and Greatly Compassionate Guan Yin Bodhisattva, Namo Nanjing Bodhisattva, Namo Tai Sui Bodhisattva; Namo Guan Di Bodhisattva, Namo Zhou Tsang Bodhisattva and Namo Guan Ping Bodhisattva.
Make vows, prayers, and recite sutras. After making prostrations, you may make vows or say your prayers. You can also recite the Great Compassion Mantra and Heart Sutra once or Qi Fo Mie Zui Zhen Yan seven times. You need to perform 7 or 13 full prostrations after that and then stand up, put your palms together and step away.
Extinguish the oil lamps and turn off the electric lotus lamps. You must extinguish the oil lamp before the incense finishes burning and turn off the electric lotus lamps at the end. It’s better to extinguish the oil lamps before you attend to other business after making prostrations.
发表于 2021-9-7 13:12:35
