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Week One: Your Shrine

Creating a Basic Tibetan Buddhist Shrine

Shrine at the Sakya Monastery

We’d like to start the course with helping you create a space in your home to serve as a focal point for your spiritual efforts. In Tibetan homes, the shrine serves as a central symbol of the Buddha, a constant reminder of the infinitely good qualities of the Buddha that as Buddhist practitioners we aim to cultivate. Making offerings at our shrine, we honor the Buddha’s Body, Speech and Mind, and cultivate generosity and wisdom, for the sake of all sentient beings.

Since this is a course for beginners, we assume that either

  1. You don’t have a shrine
  2. You have a shrine, but you are not sure if it is “right,” or respectful or appropriate.

Where to Begin?

One thing that is important for you to know is that there are just a few rules or instructions on how to set up your shrine, and that you do not need any hard-to-obtain or expensive objects to do it “right.”

There is a beautiful story of one of the Dalai Lamas looking down from the Potala Palace and seeing an old man praying the Kalachakra mantra every day on the Potang shakhor, which is the prayer path around the Potala. His Holiness noticed a cluster of Kalachakra deities gathering around the old man as he prayed, which was wonderful. He also noticed that the old man was not saying the mantra correctly, so to help him he called the man to him, and instructed him in the correct way to say the mantra. The old man was very disappointed in himself, and of course began to say the mantra the correct way, as he had been instructed. But the next time His Holiness saw him praying on his kora, there were no deities around him. Although “correct” his joyful spirit of prayer was gone. As the story goes, His Holiness recalled the man and told him to go back to saying it as he had before.

Truly, the most important element of creating a perfect shrine is a sincere motivation to cultivate the qualities of enlightenment and generosity.

The Basic Elements of a Tibetan Buddhist Shrine

  • Buddhist scripture, to represent the speech of the Buddha, which we also think of as his teachings, or the Dharma. It’s best if you can get a traditional sutra or other Tibetan Buddhist root text. As an example, you can use a copy of the Heart Sutra. The form may be as a book, or perhaps in the form of Tibetan-style scripture (pecha or chape), which are usually formatted as a stack of long, loose pages that are wrapped in cloth.
  • Statue of the Buddha Shakyamuni to represent the Buddha’s body. In addition, you may have other important Buddhist figures, like Tara, Padmasambhava, Manjushri, or Avalokiteshvara, but the only essential one is of the Buddha Shakyamuni. If you don’t have a statue of the Buddha, it is fine to have a photo or a thangkha with an image of the Buddha.
  • A stupha (in miniature), to represent the Buddha’s mind. (A photo is fine.)
  • See the Practice Tools for Week One in the sidebar for downloadable versions of all of these.

These first three elements — the statue of Buddha, scripture and the stupha — form the spiritual heart of your altar.

Offerings

One of the prime purposes of having a shrine is to purify our delusions and to generate the seeds of enlightenment by practicing generosity. We do this through making offerings.

Water Offerings

The basic offering is seven bowls of water. The bowls can be as beautiful or as simple as you like. These go on the front edge of your shrine. (In week three we go more in depth about how to make your water offerings. You can hold off until then on setting up your water offering bowls on your shrine.)

The seven water bowls are typically thought to represent the basic Seven Limb Practice undertaken as a preliminary Tibetan Buddhist practice. The Seven Limbs (or parts) are:

  1. Homage and Prostrations
  2. Making Offerings
  3. Confession of non-virtuous actions
  4. Rejoicing in the positive actions of oneself and others
  5. Requesting the Buddhas to teach
  6. Requesting the Buddhas to remain in this world
  7. Dedication of merit

Seven Shrine Offerings

There are seven shrine offerings associated with these seven practices, in order, and if you wish, you can add these to your shrine, though simple water offerings are completely fine. In our home, for example, we only have the water offering bowls. The additional seven shrine offerings are:

  1. Drinking Water
  2. Cleansing Water
  3. Flowers (can be artificial flowers placed in an offering bowl full of dry rice)
  4. Incense (usually sticks of incense placed in an offering bowl full of dry rice)
  5. Light (in the form of candles or butter lamps. Please never leave a candle or butter lamp burning unattended on your shrine. )
  6. Perfume (can be offered as a drop of perfume in a bowl of water, or a small bottle of perfume placed in a bowl filled with rice.)
  7. Food (often offered in the form of fruits or candies)

Additional Optional Items

In addition to items representing the Buddha’s Body, Speech and Mind, the water offerings, and the seven shrine offerings, you might like to add some of these:

  • A photo of your spiritual teacher(s). For Tibetans this almost always will be an image of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. There can be others in addition.
  • A thangka, which is a Tibetan scroll painting, usually with elaborate brocade edges, and usually portraying the Buddha Shakaymuni or other Buddhist deities or scenes. (This is typically hung above the shrine.)
  • A vase of flowers 
  • Butter lamps or candles (Collectively known as chomay — which means, roughly, “dharma fire” or “light”). You might have only one or as many as you want. Please never leave a candle or butter lamp burning unattended on your shrine.
  • See this post for the additional items you might place on a Losar (Tibetan New Year) shrine >>

Offerings and the Practice of Generosity

Note that you might only have a few of these objects to offer at your shrine and virtually no family will have all of these, or even most of these.

The most important aspect of your offerings is the practice of generosity and sharing, and not how nice or expensive the objects are, or how beautiful or impressive your altar is.

What the Tibetans call jembay tsultrim encourages us to give in a way that is unmotivated in wanting anything in return.

Venerable Tenzin Yignyen of Namgyal Monastery offers a very nice description of the motivation for offering in an article that can be found in full at Khandro.net:

It is best to offer things that you already have or can obtain without difficulty…

As you make offerings, think that what you are offering is in nature your own good qualities and your practice, although it appears in the form of external offering objects.

These external offerings should not be imagined as limited to the actual objects on the altar, but should be seen as vast in number, as extensive as space.

Offer food with the wish that all beings relieved of hunger, and offer water with the wish that all beings be relieved of thirst.

It is important to think that the deities accept the offerings, enjoy them, and are pleased.

Think that by making these offerings all beings are purified of their negative edge of the ultimate nature of reality is satisfied.

The purpose of making offerings is to accumulate merit and in particular to develop and increase the mind of generosity and to reduce stinginess and miserliness.

By making offerings you also create the causes for the future results of becoming naturally and spontaneously generous.

Where to Place the Objects on Your Shrine?

Assuming that you have only one level in a simple shrine, you should place the image of the Buddha Shakyamuni in the middle, and the Buddhist text on your left as you face the shrine, with the stupha on the right of the Buddha as you face the shrine. Your offerings will go along the front edge of the shrine.

If you have two levels, place the offerings, such as the water offering bowls and flowers or candles, on the lower level, and your statue, stupha and Buddhist scripture on the upper level.

If you have multiple levels, the lowest level will have your offerings. The next highest level will have your statues and your stupha. Finally, at the highest level will always be the Dharma, the Buddhist scriptures.

Where to Put your Shrine

  • Many Tibetans have a separate room for the shrine, but His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has said recently that he doesn’t consider this important, especially if you never go in this special room, or if it is just for show. Your shrine can go either in a separate room or in any clean, quiet area of your house so that you can use it for spiritual practice and meditation.
  • Generally speaking, you can make your shrine on any clean shelf, bookshelf or tabletop that is higher than the level of your head as you sit facing it.
  • If it is necessary to put it in your bedroom, that is okay, but put it at a level higher than the bed, and at the head of the bed rather than the foot, since feet are considered dirty and low in Tibetan society.
  • Never put your shrine:
    • in the bathroom or in any dirty place.
    • On the ground

Caring for your Shrine

  • At a basic level, keep your shrine clean and fresh and not dusty.
  • See the lesson for Week Three for notes on how to perform your water offerings.

You are ready now to do the practice for Week One. Please see the sidebar to the right for practice tips and for a bunch of items you can download to use for your shrine if you would like to.

We are so happy to have you with us, and grateful for the opportunity to deepen our spiritual practice together!

Continue to Week Two >>

Return to the Course Homepage >>

More resources:

“Statues and Stuphas” from The Wheel, a Shambhala Publications blog

Are you finding the course helpful?

With the intention of making this course accessible for everyone, especially during such uncertain and troubling times, we offer it to everyone at no cost. We earnestly hope that the lessons bring you benefit!

If you find the course helpful, and you have the means, we ask that you support our work preserving and nourishing Tibetan culture while helping people all over the world experience its joys.

Please make a contribution at a level you can afford here >>

Updated on August 5, 2020. First published on October 7, 2013.

Your Tibet travel advisors, Lobsang and Yolanda

Most people who want to go to Tibet don't know how to get there or who to trust for help. We’re Lobsang Wangdu and Yolanda O’Bannon, and we help make Tibet travel more simple, safe and ethical so you can feel peace of mind about your trip. Learn more about us and YoWangdu here.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Michael says

    Hi Yolanda and Lobsang,

    Thanks for the very informative site!

    You said that it is ok to put the shrine in your bedroom if it’s at the head of the bed and higher than the bed. Is it also necessary to screen off the shrine from the rest of the bedroom (such as keeping it in a cabinet, as the Japanese do with a butsudan)? I have heard that it is wrong to perform sexual activity in a room with a Buddha image in it.

    Thanks,

    Michael

    Reply

  2. Claire says

    Thanks for the informative post! I was wondering – do we need to change the dry rice in the offering bowls daily? Or is there a certain frequency that we need to replace the rice?

    Also, after we replace the dry rice, can we offer the same items (ie. the same incense, dried flowers, perfume bottles)?

    Reply

  3. Lobsang and Yolanda says

    Hi Walter,

    Thanks for your kind thoughts. Absolutely, you can use an Abhaya Mudra Buddha.

    Best warm wishes to you!

    Reply

  4. Walter says

    Hi Yowangdu
    Thank you greatly for your kindness regarding the most beautiful way of life and to practice
    Buddhism.I have obtained my Buddha many years ago and only for the past five months i have been working on my shrine and learning the teachings of Buddhism. Yowangdu i have a Abhaya Mudra Buddha with a double row lotus flowers at the base ,i hope that my Buddha statue is correct as we cannot obtain the a Shakyamuni statue of good quality material (brass) .in my country .
    Please can you advise
    Thank you kindly

    Reply

  5. David Horton says

    Dear Yolanda and Lobsang,
    Greetings! I am contacting you because I seek wisdom of that which I do not know. I was summoned by my parents to help pack up some of my brother’s things that he left in their home. One of the things that I found was a shrine of Buddha up on an alter. It was surrounded by candles and incense. Next to the Buddha, was an older picture of myself. What does this mean?
    Respectfully,
    David

    Reply

    • Lobsang and Yolanda says

      Hi David, Sorry, but we don’t know the answer to that. Maybe your brother intended to give you a blessing? Sorry that we can’t help more.

      Reply

  6. Emily Kelley says

    Hello Lobsang and Yolanda,
    I was wondering, if you have a 2 level shrine, where would I put my picture of His Holiness and my teacher? Should they be on the top level with the scripture, Buddha, and stupha, or under that one?
    Thank you for sharing this.
    Emily

    Reply

      • Aeron Sheppard says

        This post is amazing! I am a beginner Buddhist follower, and looking to prepare a proper shrine area. This is a very insightful guide, thank you.f

        Reply

  8. Katalin Kardos says

    Dear Yolanda & Lobsang,

    I am verry happy to join You on the basic Buddhism course,I love every word of it😊
    Thank You so so much!!

    Reply

  9. Alka says

    Thank you so much for this course….a long search of mine has ended and now looking forward for a new beginning…..
    Gratitude!

    Reply

  10. Lisa Rosenkoeter says

    This is my first lesson in Tibetan Buddhism, and I want to express my gratitude and thanks for making it possible for others to learn. I look forward to all the lessons. Blessings to you and your family!

    Reply

  11. Thom MacLennan-Knox says

    I’m enjoying the course however I do nother see a sidebar and therefore do not have access to any of the additional resources – the “weekly practice”, the “practice tools”, the “listen to this lesson” or the “save this lesson”. I would like to take advantage of theseveral tools, especially the ” save this lesson” option. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.
    Cheers,
    Thom MacLennan-Knox

    Reply

    • yowangdu says

      Hi Thom, and sorry for the delay in responding. Can you try viewing the lessons on another browser? So, if you are using Safari, try Firefox or Chrome, for example?

      Reply

  12. Nicholas DeSantis says

    Thank you for allowing me into this site, I been a follower Buddism for now 10 years. I was fortunate to be able to travel and work in China. It was there I found Buddism as my guide and path in life. I enjoy listening and learning and also teaching for those who want my words. I will start from step one so I may enjoy what I have learned and what I may have missed. Thank you again

    Reply

  13. Deirdre Reynolds says

    This is my 1st lesson and I’m very excited to receive teachings which will help other beings and myself come out of suffering.
    With heartfelt gratidue I thank you.

    Reply

  15. William Chamberlin says

    I utilize all these upon my Temple high altar, and much much more; also the Bell and Dorje, Preliminary Practices, relics, etc.

    Reply

  19. Christina Toussaint says

    Hi what fabric should I use for the shrine? Also is there any country of origin that I should not buy my items from? Trying to set up my shrine.

    Reply

    • yowangdu says

      Hi Christina,
      Great that you are setting up your shrine. There is no special cloth you need to use for your shrine. As for country of origin, many people choose not to buy from places where slave labor or political suppression is intense. Since this is not cultural instead of political site, we don’t wish to comment on that here. There are many websites where all of us can refer to for information on the Tibetan social justice movement. All the best to you!

      Reply

      • Christina Toussaint says

        I totally understand and also figured the something. Is there any online sties that I could order from to avoid what we are talking about.

        Reply

  20. Stefano Barbieri says

    Hi Yowangdu !
    I believe that there is a typo in chapter “Offerings and the Practice of Generosity”… it’s in the second line of the block labelled with a red bar:
    an “R” is missing
    …….what your are offering is in nature youR own good qualities and your practice, ……

    well, it was nothing but an excuse to thank you for all the work you have done and for making it available.

    Reply

    • yowangdu says

      Thanks so much, Stefano! We appreciate knowing about errors on the site! And are happy that you are finding the guide beneficial! Warmly, Yolanda and Lobsang

      Reply

    • yowangdu says

      Christina,
      If you are using a Kindle Fire, you won’t see the side bar because the screen is too small. So you should look at the bottom of the post. If you have any problems, please let us know.

      Thank you.

      Reply

  22. Tammy Dettrich says

    I am truly looking forward to learning how to practice properly. I have been practicing in my own way for some time, but I am ready to learn more. Thank you for your generosity and giving nature. Tammy

    Reply

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