The meaning

Mountain of Pure Offerings (Riwo Sang Cho) is an effective core ritual that uses the smoke of burnt offerings to create vast spiritualized offerings for enlightened beings, local deities, land guardians and the all beings within the cycle of worldly existence. This blessing accumulates vast merit, clears away obstacles, increases wealth energy and improves health, while clearing karmic debts and healing the environment. According to ancient Tibetan spiritual psychology, whatever we do in life, 4 specific factors are needed to assure that we accomplish our worldly and spiritual goals:

Without these factors, no matter how hard one makes efforts, whatever one does will not bring lasting success. Even when one is just about to achieve something, it tends to collapse. There are a very limited number of methods to increase all four factors at one time—life force, health, charisma and success energy. Among such techniques, Sang (fire offering) Dralag and prayer flags are most effective and powerful.

Background

Riwo Sang Cho practice is a mind-treasure or space message hidden in basic space almost 1,000 years ago by the legendary enlightened being, Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche). The practice was hidden away, to be discovered in a dark future time, when these teachings would be much needed.  The practice was discovered in more recent times by the great Terton (Treasure Revealer) Lhatsun Namkha Jigmed when the Sky-goers (Dakinis) revealed the practice to him in order to help him to purify obscurations, repay karmic debts and accumulate vast merit in order to enable him to enter a secret land in what is now northern Nepal and Sikkim.   Today, Tibetan practitioners of almost all lineages revere this ritual for its profound blessings and rapid effectiveness in generating peace, harmony, fulfillment of all wishes and generation of deeply permeating blessings and realization wherever it is performed.

The practice & ritual

The actual practice involves the making of a fire; anything from a large fire to a few discs of charcoal. As in all Vajrayana rituals—the highest level of Tibetan spiritual practice—the practitioner abandons his/her normal form and takes on a light-body identity that represents enlightened form, sound and mind. Many special offering substances are then offered in the sacred fire. Through the use of special mantras (sacred sound vibrations) the offerings are increased and transported by the smoke and dedicated to the four classes of guests in order to accumulate vast merit, remove hindrances to enlightenment and generate limitless blessings.

• Higher Guests: includes all the primary spiritual forces that represent the very heart of enlightenment: Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Dakinis and Yidam Dieties—and all great beings who have achieved full and completely purified awakening.

• Guests of Honor: are both enlightened and worldly protectors, a spectrum of powerful beings that guard our spiritual & material life against harm, intrusion or obstacles on all levels and assure our unadulterated progress on the spiritual path.

• Guests of Compassion: encompasses all sentient beings who wander endlessly in the six hallucinatory realms of life, never finding their true nature; humans, hell-beings, hungry spirits, animals, long-lived gods, demi-gods and waifs.

• Debtor Guests: through infinite lives we have performed negative actions, such as stealing, the taking of life, slander, malice, etc. By repaying the beings we have harmed, we are also healed, and our karmic retribution can be modified or eliminated. Offering to Higher Guests creates good karma and removes obscuration while here we eliminate karmically accumulated negativity and confusion.