SPIRITUAL: Special Event Puja

"This practice of Guru Puja is very profound, with many extra benefits, and is very quick to bring enlightenment. The lam-rim prayer, the prayer of the steps of the path to enlightenment, in Guru Puja has lam-rim and also lo-jong, or thought transformation. Generally, the whole of the lam-rim, from guru devotion up to enlightenment, is thought transformation. If your mind is not transformed into the path, how can you have realizations of the path? There’s no way, without transforming your mind."

As part of the puja, we perform a special practice called tsog which has extensive offerings. According to the Liberation Prison Project Tibetan calendar, on the 10th and 25th of every Tibetan (lunar) month, Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, “Those who have received an initiation into Highest Yoga Tantra have a commitment to perform tsog” on these days. Kadampa Center holds pujas with tsog on these dates (when they don't conflict with other programs).

Anyone is welcome to attend pujas, even if you are unfamiliar with the practice. This puja is partly recited in English and partly chanted in Tibetan. (It is possible to read the English translations of the whole puja, and there is optional sheet music available to help learn the Tibetan tunes.) Traditionally the offerings for the sangha and puja are sponsored by Dharma students, especially if they want to dedicate the puja to their spiritual teachers or loved ones in need of support and prayers.

Sponsoring a puja is a great way to create merit, and it's especially auspicious to do so on a holy day for a puja dedicated to one of our teachers. Sponsorship of this puja is $75, and sponsors can include a dedication that we will read at the puja so everyone can join in the sponsor's intentions. 

Sponsor Here

Shakyamuni Buddha Puja is a source of good collections: a rite of homage, worship (making offerings) and prayers to the teacher, the King of Sages, remembering his previous lives and biography.

The main point of the puja is to develop one's faith in the Buddha and collect vast merits by thinking about the wonderful things he has done - both in his countless previous lives as a bodhisattva and in his life as Shakyamuni, feeling joyful about them and making offerings, both real and visualized. The framework of the central part of the puja is the seven limbs. These are preceded by various preliminaries aimed at getting the participants into the right frame of mind and at setting up the visualization of the field of merit, to whom the seven limbs are addressed. One also purifies one's negative karmas by confessing them with regret and creates further merits by auspicious wishes and prayers for the flourishing of the Buddha's doctrine. These are followed by prayers which comprise the extensive limb of dedication and then saying goodbye to the beings in the field of merit.

(Extracted from A Service Manual for Spiritual Program Coordinators, FPMT and Shakyamuni Puja - Worshipping the Buddha, Wisdom Publications, London.)

From Lama Zopa Rinpoche:

I want to introduce the Guru Shakyamuni Puja, which I found very beneficial for the mind and especially, I thought for developing bodhicitta and entering into the Bodhisattva deeds - the extensive, hard Bodhisattva deeds. It gives great inspiration to sacrifice oneself for sentient beings equaling the sky.

Shakyamuni Buddha Puja is a source of good collections: a rite of homage, worship (making offerings) and prayers to the teacher, the King of Sages, remembering his previous lives and biography.

The main point of the puja is to develop one's faith in the Buddha and collect vast merits by thinking about the wonderful things he has done - both in his countless previous lives as a bodhisattva and in his life as Shakyamuni, feeling joyful about them and making offerings, both real and visualized. The framework of the central part of the puja is the seven limbs. These are preceded by various preliminaries aimed at getting the participants into the right frame of mind and at setting up the visualization of the field of merit, to whom the seven limbs are addressed. One also purifies one's negative karmas by confessing them with regret and creates further merits by auspicious wishes and prayers for the flourishing of the Buddha's doctrine. These are followed by prayers which comprise the extensive limb of dedication and then saying goodbye to the beings in the field of merit.

(Extracted from A Service Manual for Spiritual Program Coordinators, FPMT and Shakyamuni Puja - Worshipping the Buddha, Wisdom Publications, London.)

From Lama Zopa Rinpoche:

I want to introduce the Guru Shakyamuni Puja, which I found very beneficial for the mind and especially, I thought for developing bodhicitta and entering into the Bodhisattva deeds - the extensive, hard Bodhisattva deeds. It gives great inspiration to sacrifice oneself for sentient beings equaling the sky.