The power of prayer is well known in all religious and spiritual traditions. According to Buddhism, our experiences in life are the result of our past actions. Past harmful actions create suffering and virtuous actions create happiness.
Prayers and pujas allow us to purify the negative actions we accumulated in the past and eliminate or prevent the arising of the resulting obstacles. Pujas are special rituals in which prayers are offered to the Buddhas to request their help and invoke their blessings.
The power of prayers derives from the sincere motivation of the person asking for prayers, as well as the pure mind of the persons performing the prayers. It is said that prayers performed by ordained ones are especially powerful and effective as they are done on the basis of pure morality. But most importantly, making offerings to the different manifestations of enlightened beings, and to the sangha community generates and increases merit, our positive potential. Merit is needed to have success in all activities.
Pujas are performed to avert and clear the three types of obstacles which arise due to the lack of merit, which prevent us from achieving our mundane and spiritual goals. Removing these obstacles can help us achieve happiness and good fortune in all our activities.
How to chose a puja?
While some prayers are of general benefit, others can help us with more specific problems. If you are not sure, which puja to chose, you can use this form to describe your motivation for requesting a puja (ie. the challenges you face or the goals you strive to achieve), and our resident lamas will advise you.
Why request a puja?
Pujas can help us eliminate different kinds of obstacles:
- Mundane obstacles, such as those related to our job and finances, family and relationships.
- Inner obstacles causing mental and physical health issues, strong emotions, confusion and the like.
- Secret obstacles obstructing our spiritual practice.
Pujas can be performed for various purposes:
- For the dying – to help pacify their mind at the time of death and support them in the process of dying.
- For the deceased – to help them accumulate merit and guide them to good rebirths and/or liberation.
- For sickness – to remove obstacles to mental and physical health.
- For success in one’s activities – to remove obstacles to success in all wordly and spiritual activities.
A puja can be requested with a Gift of Blessings card, if you are looking for a special gift for a special person or a person in need.
In this case, choose the “As a gift of Blessings Card” option on the order form. Once we have received your request we will send “The Gift of Blessings” card by e-mail to the beneficiary you indicated on the form together with your personal dedication.
You will also receive a confirmation with the exact date(s) of the puja(s) scheduled according to the auspicious dates in Tibetan lunar calendar.