Puja Offerings to Sangha
Rinpoche advised these pujas for a student’s mother who was very sick, and explained the benefits of making offerings to Sangha. This advice was handwritten by Rinpoche and lightly edited for ease of reading.
For your mother, do the extensive Medicine Buddha puja three times. First, do it one time, then it can be checked again. It may be OK just doing it well one time. Do what you can with a very good motivation—it should be bodhicitta motivation for all the sentient beings, for anyone who needs this puja.
The other practice to benefit your mother is reading the Prajnaparamita, but first make sure to discuss the expenses for the Sangha —the tea, bread and money offerings.
[Offering to the Sangha] collects so much merit, because all the monks who will recite the Prajnaparamita are getsul, living in the thirty-six vows, or gelong, living in two hundred and fifty-three vows. There are unbelievable merits collected. That many monks are living in that many vows, so there are unbelievable merits collected.
The most important thing is that most of the monks have received teachings from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. They have taken His Holiness as their guru, so they are disciples of the same guru as you. Therefore, you collect the most unbelievable merits.
There is a story of one person a long time ago who had nothing; he was a very poor person who made one offering of medicinal food, just one time, to four ordinary monks. “Ordinary” means the monks did not have the wisdom directly realizing emptiness. After that person died, he was reborn as King Kashika, the most powerful, wealthiest, most famous king in India. That was the result of having made that offering in his past life.