The Merit of Making Offerings to the Three Jewels Is Immeasurable and Boundless

Among the precepts for monastics, there is the practice of eating in a single sitting: when the meal is served, one must sit and eat until finished, and rise and leave once done. If one stands up midway to get more rice, or walks around and comes back to continue eating, that is not allowed—one may not go for second or third helpings. Once the body stands up, it signifies that the meal is finished. In the Buddha's time, monastics ate one meal a day at midday, because alms-begging was very time-consuming, and eating one meal at midday saved a great deal of time for cultivation. If one begged for alms two or three times a day, it would not only waste a great deal of time but would also invite ridicule from worldly people and non-Buddhists, who would say that monastics spend all day begging for food and eating—gluttonous and without cultivation. Third, eating too much causes the stomach and intestines to churn and digest constantly, leaving the mind without tranquility (praśama) and hindering cultivation; overeating also consumes one's own merit, making it impossible to advance on the path of the Way. Taking all these factors together, the Saṅgha established the precept of one meal a day at midday.

When monastics beg for alms, it is also so that sentient beings have a field of merit to plant, providing beings with the opportunity to cultivate merit and to attain liberation. The more sentient beings give in generosity (dāna), the greater their merit, the more opportunities they have for liberation, and the greater their chances of liberation. Monastics begging for alms does not make sentient beings poor; on the contrary, beings will become increasingly wealthy and noble. Nor is it the case that because monastics beg for alms once every day, Buddhism gradually perishes. The demise of Buddhism has many causes—chiefly that sentient beings' roots of goodness and merit grow ever fewer, so that beings lack the fortune to encounter the Buddha-dharma and attain liberation; coupled with Māra Pāpīyas' destruction of Buddhism, Buddhism inevitably declines day by day and finally perishes. When sentient beings give alms to monastics, the Buddha's rule does not permit refusal; one must let beings plant merit and reap its fruit. Otherwise, beings will have no merit and will forever wander through the six realms, poor and suffering. If you have a field of merit to plant, you should also be grateful to the Buddha and the Saṅgha, grateful to the Three Jewels—otherwise, when will you ever attain liberation?

The Buddha said in the sūtras that the merit of making offerings to the Buddha is boundless and immeasurable. In particular, the first meal after the Buddha's attainment of the Way and the last meal before his parinirvāṇa—if one has the opportunity to make such an offering, that person can attain buddhahood most swiftly, surpassing all others. The Buddha's first meal after attaining the Way was the sheep's milk offered by the shepherdess, and his last meal before parinirvāṇa was offered by the blacksmith Cunda. At that time, an extremely great number of people pleaded with the World-Honored One to be allowed to offer the Buddha his last meal, but the Buddha permitted none of them; only when the blacksmith Cunda made his request to offer the meal did the Buddha nod and consent. The Buddha then gave a prediction that the blacksmith would become a Buddha, because in a past life the Buddha had once promised Cunda that he would offer the Buddha his last meal of food and drink at the time of the Buddha's parinirvāṇa. It is evident that having the karmic opportunity to make offerings to the Buddha and the Three Jewels brings merit beyond imagination.