What Is A Puja?
Puja is a ritual ceremony in which prayers are offered to the Gurus, Buddhas, and Bodhisattvas to request their blessings and invoke their help.
Puja, are performed to avert and clear the three types of obstacles: conditions that prevent us from achieving our worldly and spiritual goals -
1. outer obstacles: these affect our day-to-day life, relationships, business and finances; 2. inner obstacles: these affect our health or mental state; 3. secret obstacles: these obstruct the attainment of innate wisdom and everlasting happiness.
They may also be performed for the dying to help pacify their mind, or to guide a deceased to a higher state of rebirth.
Pujas involve reciting sutras (sacred texts), chanting mantras (sacred phrases), visualising Buddhas and Bodhisattvas (enlightened beings), performing mudras (sacred gestures), and offering water, flowers, incense, light, food, music, etc. All these methods generate merit which is an indispensable factor in clearing the locality from diseases, and increases one’s lifespan, happiness and wealth.
Negative karma is being purified, and the merit acquired from the offerings is also used to trigger the forces of latent positive potential in oneself or others. The merit is used to awaken the forces of one’s own or other’s good karma so that obstacles can be overcome. Accumulation of merit also has a positive influence on the spread of Dharma and increases conducive conditions for a practitioner’s development on the paths to liberation and enlightenment.
