If we get into the habit of making mandala offerings, we swiftly purify our mind and start to see the world in a purer way. For example, we may notice that we can still love people even when we disagree entirely with what they are saying. We can see past the insanity of their delusions to their Buddha nature and equal and unchanging wish to be happy. We start to develop a non-partisan view, free from attachment, aversion, and indifference, because we want everyone to live in a Pure Land. This way we are following the Bodhisattva’s aspiring bodhichitta precept of never abandoning love for any being, which is bringing us closer to enlightenment and the fulfillment of our own deepest wishes. We come to see for ourselves how this is the only way we’re all going to end up being happy with each other. This is world peace.
Carrying on from this article: Mandala offerings 2: a profound practice for letting go.
In 1998, Venerable Geshe Kelsang taught:
When we make short mandala offerings on the mandala base, we think that in reality we are offering all the environments, enjoyments, and beings of a thousand million worlds. We do this in our imagination. We do not need to think that our mandala base becomes bigger or that the worlds becomes smaller; we simply imagine. We also offer all the god realms above this world. We offer all the enjoyments and beautiful things within the environments wherever there are living beings, mentally transforming into pure objects. In the beginning this is difficult to do, but if we do it many times every day then gradually we will develop greater familiarity with this practice, and we will accumulate great merit and experience many special results.
Purify our perceptions, purify our world
As Venerable Geshe-la teaches in his free ebook all about Buddhism called How to Transform Your Life:
A magician creates various things
Such as horses, elephants and so forth.
His creations do not actually exist;
You should know all things in the same way.
Nowadays it can be easier than ever to see that we live in a land of illusion—levels upon levels of illusion in fact—hanging out as we do in the world of screens and AI. On this train from the Lake District to London, a lot of people are on their phones – why not look out the window instead, I wonder, at the pretty scenery? But there again, what is more real – the illusions on our screens or the illusions of the trees whizzing past? I suppose a more practical question is “Which of these is more beneficial? Which will give rise to positive minds versus delusions?” Check out this article for more on that: Beneficial believing.
Things exist only for the minds perceiving them. There is nothing out there, nothing existing from its own side. Which in fact gives us a choice: for instead of relating to the universe as ordinary, impure, and mundane, we can start to impute it as pure, sacred, even divine. Hence this extraordinary line in the book 
The Oral Instructions of Mahamudra:
In short, offering the mandala is offering a Pure Land generated through the power of correct imagination. There is no difference between offering a Pure Land generated through the power of correct imagination and offering an actual Pure Land – both are mere appearance to the mind. If we have a pure mind both exist, and if we do not have a pure mind neither exists.
I highly recommend Venerable Geshe-la’s whole explanation of offering the mandala in Oral Instructions.
Outer, inner, secret, and thatness mandala offerings
If we’re a Tantric practitioner, we can offer what is probably our main object of attachment and self-cherishing, our own body, in an outer, inner, secret, and thatness offering. Even without Tantric empowerments we can offer up our body in the first two ways, ie, outer and inner. As Geshe Kelsang says:
Offering the mandala in this way is a powerful method for overcoming cherishing our body.
This is the verse for that:
O Treasure of Compassion, my Refuge and Protector,
I offer you the mountain, continents, precious objects, treasure vase, sun and moon,
Which have arisen from my aggregates, sources and elements
As aspects of the exalted wisdom of spontaneous bliss and emptiness.IDAM GURU RATNA MANDALAKAM NIRYATAYAMI
This one is well worth doing because it will not only reduce our grasping at our body, but also increase our bliss and wisdom. And create extraordinarily powerful karma for a pure, utterly comfortable, problem-free body in the future.
To do this I remember that the body and self I normally perceive and normally cherish do not exist, have never existed, and can never exist at all. If I look for them with wisdom, they disappear, like the water of a mirage. So that self and the world of that self completely disappear, I meditate on that emptiness with a mind of bliss, and this union of bliss and emptiness appears as Buddha Heruka or Buddha Vajrayogini.
Then (similar to the Kusali tsog offering if you know that one), identifying myself as the Deity, I offer up my previous, ordinary, hallucinated body totally transformed into the mandala offering in its traditional aspect. For example my trunk is Mount Meru and my four limbs are the four continents; and you can read the rest of that detail in Great Treasury of Merit. Or take a look at this: A special offering of the mandala, by the newly minted General Spiritual Director of the New Kadampa Tradition.
I also meditate on how this mandala is the nature of great bliss (the secret offering) and inseparable from emptiness (the thatness offering); and offer it to my Guru, who experiences the great delight of bliss and emptiness. Emptiness is how things exist, so “thatness” or “suchness” are other words for emptiness, bit like “That’s how it is!” or “Such it is!”
In summary: the outer mandala offering is offering the mandala in its outer aspect of Mount Meru etc; understanding it to be our body transformed makes it an inner offering; understanding that it is inseparable from the mind of great bliss, or is the nature of great bliss, makes it a secret offering; and understanding that it is arising from emptiness, or is the nature of emptiness, makes it a thatness offering. If we envision our body transformed in this way, then we are making all four mandala offerings all at once. Very efficient! And very profound.
Because everything is the nature of bliss and emptiness, we are in fact offering everything that exists, all completely transformed. The merit is unimaginable. If we can do that properly each day, there doesn’t seem to be much need to do anything else, you can take the rest of the day off, lol. And I think I have mentioned before that it is one of my favorite practices—not least because it can leave you feeling as high as a kite (in a good way).
If you like, you can then offer the objects of the delusions as explained in the previous article: Mandala offerings 2: a profound practice for letting go. (Or you can do that first and then this.)
Making mandala offerings on others’ behalf
Samsara has always been pervaded by suffering, as fire is pervaded by heat. If, with some love in our heart, we “open our eyes,” as Venerable Geshe Kelsang suggests, wherever we look we can see that everyone has problems and that no one is as happy as they’d like, or at least not for long. When I make mandala offerings I therefore like to imagine the people around me making mandala offerings too, such as my mum and dad. They are offering everything they’ve loved and desired throughout their long lives. They are offering all the objects of their delusions, purified. They are offering all their hallucinations or mistaken appearances, all disappeared and transformed. As a result, I imagine that they completely purify their minds and experience permanent happiness in the Pure Land. 
Mandala offering retreats are put on by Kadampa Centers worldwide twice a year as part of the Teacher Training Program (and open to all), so check that out if you’d like to get that support: Kadampa Center directory. During these retreats, when there is time to do lots of offerings, I typically include my parents, family, friends, and/or cats I’ve fostered, for example, as a good entry point that touches my heart. I either offer them in my own mandala or imagine them making several of their own mandala offerings.
Then I might add other people I know who also need prayers, gradually spreading this out to everyone in this troubled world and beyond. This is one of the main occasions when I do make really strong, concerted prayers. Or at least it’s my favorite time to do that because it is so encouraging—I am imagining them all experiencing the results of those prayers right here, right now, forever free in a Buddha Land.
The four complete purities
In the Pure Land, everyone is experiencing the four complete purities.
The practice of the mandala offering is a scientific method to attain the Pure Land of a Buddha. It contains the practice of the four complete purities mentioned in Tantric teachings – the complete purities of worlds, body, enjoyments, and activities. For qualified practitioners this practice of the mandala offering is very profound and powerful, and attainments are achieved quickly. For this reason, to show an example to others, Je Tsongkhapa made offering the mandala one of his principal practices. ~ The Oral Instructions of the Mahamudra
The four complete purities that make up a qualified Tantric practice are basically life as experienced by an enlightened being. This is as opposed to life for a samsaric being – for whom the complete IMpurities of our world, body, enjoyments, and activities constitute life. At least, I can’t think of anything not included.
Hope this helps! I still have a bit more to say on the subject. Meantime, if you want to browse the earlier articles on mandala offerings, here they are:
Mandala offerings 1: a powerful spiritual technology for our times
Mandala offerings 2: a profound practice for letting go
