An Extract from: Puja
Imagine a world without colour, beauty, poetry, myth, celebration, or ritual. Such a world would be a very dull, drab, dead world indeed. Such experiences are essential to human life; they cultivate our emotions, refine our senses, and enrich our imaginations. Poetry, symbol, myth, and ritual carry us – as Shelley suggests in his Defence of Poetry – 'to regions of light and fire, where the winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar'. We cannot live in the realm of rational thought alone. To feel fully and vibrantly alive, we must feel in touch with all the different aspects and levels of our being.

Buddhism is a spiritual tradition, and as such speaks to us in our wholeness. Its various practices can help us to bring into being a harmony of body, speech, and mind. Throughout its history, therefore, many forms of ceremony and ritual have been developed. These range from the simplest recitation of a few verses to the most complex and lengthy rituals.

Devotional practice is multifaceted, often involving the simultaneous recitation of verses of worship, physical activity, the conscious development of positive emotional states, as well as the mental creation of and reflection on images and symbols. Such practices clearly demand our total attention and allow no time for distraction.

Included in this Puja Book are images of various Buddhist figures. Some are depictions of the historical Buddha, others are archetypal Buddhas who do not exist on the historical level but symbolize a particular facet of the jewel of Enlightenment. The five jinas, or conquerors, symbolizing five sets of associated qualities of Enlightenment, are such archetypal Buddhas. Other images are of Bodhisattvas, in male or female form, who represent the inspiring principle of Enlightenment at work in the world for the welfare of the many.

All Buddhist traditions up to the present day have given a central place to ritual and devotional chanting, often in a mix of local language and the inherited Buddhist languages Pali and Sanskrit. In keeping with this tradition, these practices in FWBO centres around the world are also conducted in a mix of local language and Pali or Sanskrit. This deliberately ensures that some ceremonies which are conducted in the common, locally shared, language (in the case of this Puja Book, English) provide an easily and readily understood focus for devotion. By chanting in Pali or Sanskrit we are participating in a ritual that takes its inspiration from history and at the same time provides our international Buddhist movement with rituals that have a language in common. This is a strong factor in building harmony and unity.

The poetic words recited, the images invoked, and the emotions cultivated, are grounded in a coherent value system. They express our most deeply held ideals. Thus ritual practice, involving as it does the whole person, enables us to begin the task of translating our intellectual understanding into emotional experience: in other words, to transform knowing into being. They are usually performed with a number of people in a room that is focused on the beauty of a 'shrine', with its Buddha image, flowers, flickering candles, and fragrant incense. In such an atmosphere our devotional feelings more freely find expression, enabling us to be receptive to our higher ideals and accordingly enriched.

Ritual practices within the Buddhist tradition are referred to as puja, which means 'devotional worship'. This book contains a number of such practices in the form of chants, ceremonies, and rituals, which are recited and performed at various times. For example, we may precede a period of meditation by either chanting the Tiratana Vandana or reciting the Short Puja. Both these express devotional feelings towards the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and thus their recitation puts us in touch with our ideals, and therefore our highest and deepest motivating energies, before we meditate.

The recitation of verses is often accompanied by the making of simple offerings that symbolize both our gratitude to the Buddha for the gift of his wise example and our determination to win through to that Enlightened state. In addition to these verses, a puja often includes mantras. Just as Buddha and Bodhisattva statues are visual symbols of Enlightenment, so mantras are sound-symbols of Enlightenment. Some mantras consist only of sounds that are entirely symbolic, and therefore untranslatable, while others may also have some conceptual meaning. Often Sanskrit mantras such as 'om mani padme hum' are recited. The words mani padme mean 'O, Jewel-Lotus': we can turn over in our mind the deeper and deeper implications of this. The Vajrasattva mantra, while deeply symbolical of spiritual purification, could also be considered to be more like a song, perhaps even a love song. Whatever the form or conceptual meaning of the mantra we are to reflect mainly on the various levels of symbolic meaning as applied to the spiritual life.

Of the various devotional ceremonies that we perform, perhaps the most spiritually important is that of the Sevenfold Puja. Traditionally the performance of this puja is an emotional and spiritual preparation for the arising of the bodhicitta, the 'will or aspiration for the Enlightenment of all beings', which is the central ideal of Mahayana Buddhism. Through our regular and sincere practice of puja, in company with our fellow aspirants, we can refine our emotional positivity to such a pitch that we begin to break through our habitual self-centredness and isolation, and feel an empathy with all life. In this way we prepare the ground for our own self-transcendence which is the basis for the arising of the bodhicitta. As a result, the bodhicitta can 'arise within' or 'descend upon' the spiritual community practising together. By so practising we can bring into being what Sangharakshita has called the 'collective' consciousness. This he has described as 'a special sort of consciousness, common to, in a sense even shared by, a number of truly human individuals who follow the same spiritual disciplines and have the same spiritual ideals.' The performance of puja can therefore be seen as an essential element in the creation of a spiritual community.