Mental attitude while offering alms-food

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The virtuous devotee, endowed with great faith in the Buddha, wishing to promote long endurance of his teaching and emergence of succession of good, dutiful Sangha who would maintain the prosperity and purity of the Sasana, should support the Sangha organization by offering regular alms-food to its members.

But when alms-food has been prepared ready for offering, the devotee must remove any attachment as "this is my Sayadaw", "this is the monk that I had helped ordained", "this is my favourite monk" and so on.

Instead, he must incline his mind to the whole Sangha while making the offering uttering at the same time "I offer this to the Sangha, Samgassa demi". When the dana performance is made daily in such a manner, the offering becomes a true Sanghika Dana.

The invited meal can become a Sanghika Dana

Going to a nearby monastery, the invitation must be offered to the responsible head monk. "Reverend Sir, I wish to make an offering of alms-food at my house tomorrow at 6 am, be kind enough to send me one or more monks to partake of the meal". One should not mention including yourself or the head monk in making the invitation.

And while making preparation for the morrow's offering of meals, one's mind should be directed to the whole Sangha, not to any particular monk of a particular monastery and repeating "Samghassa Demi".

When the monk arrives the next morning for meal, one must not feel let down or disappointed if the recipient monks happens to be of the lower rank or junior in status. One should remind oneself "the offering is not made to him or them in particular, but it is meant for the entire Sangha" and make the meal offering with genuine respect and due devotion.

If the monk who comes to receive the offering should be the head monk himself, the devotee should not feel exultant either, he or she should remind himself that the offering is being made not just to the head monk only but to the entire Sangha order of which he is a member.

"Thus, when one can incline towards the whole Sangha, the offering made to a monk appointed by the Sangha can be counted as Sanghika Dana", offering made to the whole Sangha community.

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