I would like to explain why we offer the items to the Buddha such as flower, light, incense and foods, which includes also water.

LIGHT OFFERING

    Followers of many religions of the world practise Light Offering today. Each may have its own interpretation. In Buddhism, light is compared to Wisdom while ignorance is to darkness. After His enlightenment, the Lord Buddha Himself in the First Sermon declared that "In Him wisdom and light arose".

    In that very sermon together with wisdom and light, He also equalised vision and knowledge with His supreme enlightenment.

    The Buddha is the one who has developed His wisdom to the ever—highest point that all living beings can develop. He was able to guide people because He possessed such excellent wisdom. We are offering light to the Buddha in honour of His supreme wisdom. Every time we make such an offering, it reminds us that each and every of us has the same potential and we can achieve it. This is technically called reflection on the quality of the Buddha (Buddhanussati). It is one of various Buddhist meditation methods that can help you build up full concentration.

    Light, which is wisdom uproots the cause of suffering. It leads all other factors in the Noble Eightfold Path. It indicates that without wisdom that penetrates into the reality of life, life will not realise its full potential, which is lasting peace.

FLOWERS OFFERING

   Offering of flowers is another practice commonly found in many religions. To the followers of Buddhism, this means a sign of paying homage to the Buddha for his Morality. Flower has fragrance as well as beauty. Its manifold colours are wonderful. It beautifies the world. We can hardly see anyone hating flowers. The wind brings its sweet smell to various directions making people feel fresh and adding strength and new idea into their life. It makes the world a better place to live.

   In the same way, a moral man can greatly contribute to world peace; His fame reaches far and wide; He presents the society with a new idea of how to live a meaningful life without damaging environments; He lives an energetic life. With his morality, he lays a good foundation to further develop insight. The morality of the Buddha is manifold and brings delight to many. For this very reason, we make an offering of flowers to the Buddha in an admiration of His highest morality. This, to put it according to Buddhist scriptures, is a meditative practice both for reflecting the moral quality of the nobles (Silanussati) and for the quality of the Buddha (Buddhanussati).

    We also reflect on the decaying process of flowers and make it a point to apply it to our body, which undergoes constant change. Starting from a bud, it progresses and at last dies. It is a reflection on impermanence.

   Offering incense, which admires people with its fragrance, bears similar meaning. Both also stand for purity of the Buddha.

FOODS OFFERING

    Making an offering of foods to the statue of the Buddha is last what I would like to explain here today.

    First of all, it may be interesting to some people why we offer foods to the statue instead of a living one. We believe that we will get almost the same psychological effectiveness and merits just like offering it to the living Buddha Himself provided we have the same attitude, the same veneration towards His image. It is all about developing devotion (Saddha).

    Besides this, although the living Buddha was no more, His teachings are left to us to portray His real life and to continue to guide us. The Lord Buddha Himself in His dying bed, at Kushinagar, India said this. Therefore, we have to keep in our mind that we are offering foods to the living Buddha Himself.

    The Buddha said, "All beings are sustained on foods". It means more than anything else food is essential and important for living beings. As a sign of showing our gratitude and as a noble practice of giving, sharing, sacrificing and trying to reduce our attachment we offer foods including water to the Buddha.

    In addition, in an admiration of sharing, giving something away done by the Lord Buddha, we do this offering. This is another kind of meditative practice, which is known as reflection on the quality of sharing (Caganussati). Besides being meditative practices in their own way, actually all these offerings come under the exercise of sharing.

To summarise it, this practice is to encourage, cultivate and develop devotion, morality, concentration and wisdom. Buddha puja is not practised for superstitious belief and the stanzas we chant are not prayer