Prayer (Puja)

A puja in my Buddhist tradition is a ceremony that includes reflection, chanting and offerings that deepen appreciation of The Buddha and his teachings.  It moves through seven stages which include gratitude, confession and reverence.The Sanskrit word puja simply “reverence, honour, homage, adoration, or worship”, so a Puja is a ceremony that enables us to create the highest merit by making actual and visualized offerings, with the bodhicitta motivation, to the highest objects of offering, the Guru and the Triple Gem – the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. That merit is the basis for achieving every good thing up to and including enlightenment. According to Buddhism, the world in which we live and all that happens to us is a result of our