Releasing or unwinding karmic patterns of body, energy, and mind is one way of talking about self-realization. When we make daily offerings to our ancestors, we are helping to release patterns that we share with them.

Who are our ancestors?

Our ancestors are those with whom we share strong patterns of consciousness and energy. We have different names for this patterning: our bodies, our habitual activities and our habitual emotions. The nearer ancestors are to us, the more habitual patterning, or karma, we share.

WHY MAKE OFFERINGS TO OUR ANCESTORs?

Daily ancestor offering gives us the opportunity to:

  1. communicate to our ancestors our gratitude for our human lives;
  2. state the kind intention to benefit our ancestors through our dharmic activities in this life;
  3. express our wish that our ancestors, in whatever form they now exist, might find opportunities to be relieved of suffering and to self-realize; and
  4. ask for support or communicate things that need to be said.

How to make daily ancestor offerings