HOME BUDDHIST BASICS MEDITATION PUJAS GALLERY QUOTATIONS
TIBETAN PUJAS
Most Tibetan pujas involve the imaginative creation of a ‘deity’ (i.e. an image which embodies qualities of Enlightenment such as compassion, energy, understanding and so on). The puja aims to transform our ordinary perceptions of the world into a way of seeing which is more open to the light of Emptiness. The Dalai Lama writes:
....imagining everything that appears as the divine body and supporting mandala
of the deity - should be understood as a perception to be developed for a very
specific purpose, rather than out of belief in its correspondence to reality,
this purpose being to overcome our sense of ordinariness. On the level of our
imagination, we try to develop the ability to see all appearances as the divine
forms of the deity; by doing
so, our apprehension of any thought remains always within the context of
emptiness”. - The World of Tibetan Buddhism, p.11
CHENREZI PUJA
This is the puja that we will be singing. It is a slightly shortened version of a puja that is sung every evening at Marpa House, and at many Kagyu monsteries throughout the world. Most of the tunes are traditional chants, but the music for the 'lineage' section was composed quite recently by the 17th Karmapa. The music for the initial 'Aspiration for enlightenment' section comes from a collaboration between the Bhutanese Lama Gyurmé and French keyboardist Jean-Philippe Rykiel.