A Nepalese Bhairava temple butter lamp from the Kathmandu Valley.

About the Bhairava temple:
Unlike other temples, which are almost always square, the Bhairava Temple in Taumadhi Tole has the typical rectangular plan of a Bhairava or Bhimsen shrine. These are built in the style of a house, as is clearly seen from the Akasha Bhairava Mandir in Kathmandu. The worship room is accordingly not on the ground floor.

Symbolism of butter lamps:
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 difilements - gross afflictive emotional defilements and subtle habitual defilements. While the Buddha does not have 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. The lamp should be thoroughly cleaned and the wick made very carefully so that it is not too short or too long, too thick or too thin. The bottom part of the wick should be thicker than the top portion. The oil should be poured into the lamp very slowly, so that none overflows; the amount of oil should be the same in each lamp and not too meager.

Why to offer butter lamps?
What is the meaning of Butter Lamp offering and why to offer Butter Lamps? In the vajrayana Buddhist tradition, we accumulate merit in order to create positive short - term circumstances such as health, wealth, longevity and more deeply, to reveal our wisdom to nature. Of all the methods for accumulating merit through generosity, offering Butter Lamps is one of the best, second only to the practice of feast offering.

In the Buddhist Tradition, Butter Lamps symbolize the clarity of wisdom. Offering Butter Lamps creates harmony, and generates merit while promoting success, prosperity, longevity, and world peace, as well as helping to avert obstacles, pacify the upheaval of the five elements, and heal disease. When offered on behalf of the deceased, prayers are usually recited for their liberation in the Bardo and rebirth in a Pureland. People do not offer the lamps because enlightened beings need to see them. Rather, the offering of light is a means of dispelling the darkness of our own ignorance, giving rise to clarity and wisdom. People offer with the wish that their light will illuminate the lower realms and the bardo, assuaging the torment of beings who suffer in darkness. People also aspire that all beings will develop greater mental clarity in order to discover the causes of long - lasting happiness in virtuous actions of body, speech, and mind. Finally, we offer them so that the inner light of great knowing will arise in all beings' minds and remove the darkness of ignorance and intellectual obscurations.

Traditionally, Butter Lamps are also offered as a dedication to the dead in order to guide them through the bardo by wisdom light. We can pray as well that this guide all beings of the six realms, removing their obscurations so that they may awaken to their true wisdom nature. With genuine faith and devotion, visualize that with your offerings, countless offering goddesses offer immeasurable light to all enlightened beings.
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