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The Para Pujaby Michelle Lawson
Pujas are ritualized practices of offering and worship traditional to both Shaivism and Buddhism. Over the past few years, Swamiji has talked frequently about the importance of pujas as vehicles to further spiritual growth, and he has introduced the Chöd puja to the Institute practice. He has also talked extensively about the Para puja and performed it on several occasions this fall in Portland.
The Para puja was the highest ritual practice in the Trika tradition. It is, however, no longer practiced in India. After much painstaking work with the Shaiva texts, Professor Alexis Sanderson, a renowned Sanskrit scholar from Oxford University who has been a regular visiting lecturer at the Institute, has succeeded in reconstructing the various elements of this puja. The work he has done on the Para puja is superb.
Swamiji's own teachings about the Para puja have been among his most eloquent and inspiring. The puja is a highly refined and aesthetically elegant practice. Swamiji has described it as a ritual in which we make offerings of everything that is sweet and fine, and expand and strengthen our connection to the place within ourselves from which that sweetness and fineness arises.
Swamiji and Alexis have been engaged in an ongoing dialogue on the Para puja for several years, and are currently working on the details of the initiation. In future programs, Swamiji will instruct us how to perform the Para puja and give us the initiation. Nityananda Institute will then be the only place in the world where this puja is practiced.
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