It helps to have a template, a set of guidelines that leads you gently and progressively from one point to another. Over the course of the past several months, I’ve been thinking and teaching more and more about puja. Sure, I’ve been cultivating a little altar in my home for years. And I have my own style of ritual when I practice yoga and teach class. But I’ve been wanting to know how you’re ‘supposed’ to do it outwardly at the same time that the inner meaning has become ever more clear and important. This past weekend, I got to spend some time with two very dear people, and I got really inspired. One, a murti wala named Manoj Chalan, regaled us with tales of the gods and goddesses and the details of their iconography. The other, my longtime teacher Zhenja LaRosa, taught me how I could teach as puja. It made the process of creating a class even more of a sacred act than it already was for me.
Manoj has sold me four murtis. They are small statues of deities, like the ones you might find at the front of a yoga studio. I am thankful for the Bank of Manoj, whose payments always seem to equal out to $108 per month. Auspicious, I know. The murtis live where I usually practice yoga in my home, and I often light a candle for them or put a flower out for them. But it’s not about what I do to them or for them as it is about the exchange of light between us. See, they are just me in reflection. That’s why they’re shiny, so I can see myself better. But what’s the difference between laying on my bed and looking at my Ganesha and doing puja? Well, there’s a way ‘in’ and a way ‘out’. We go step by step, gently. Bring an offering and come receptive, so that the puja can receive your offering and give something back. Like gift giving, a true exchange leaves each party with more than just things coming out even.
Even if you’ve never done this before, you’ve done this before. There’s some experience that pointed you toward this one, and that was facilitated by a teacher. Traditionally, you honor your teacher and two more generations back. Less traditionally, you could honor your self, another person, and the kula. The collective consciousness of the kula can often take us so much farther than any one consciousness. The self is the guru, I’d do anything Zhenja said (although she’d probably hate that), and numbers don’t lie when assessing your reality. However you do it, do three. One is inert. Two’s too stable. Three gets something rolling. What we’re getting going here is the receptive part. To see yourself, you have to let something in more than yourself. It melts your heart.
Soften first, then focus. Douglas Brooks likes to call this part ‘today’s special’. It’s the flavor of the day, the focal point of the conversation. It’s the process of articulating what you’d like to get at. We may be tempted to just be open or let whatever happen, but putting effort toward naming some thing or another let’s the universe know that someone’s coming to dinner. I have a mental image of the universe pulling some delicious treat out of the freezer and throwing all of the mess in the kid’s closet five minutes before I show up. I always tell the universe the place looks great.
Once we know we’re having a party, Ganesha comes. He gets Most Invited Guest for a few reasons. First, he’s the elephant in the room, taking up your subconscious. He’s the threshold, the there you need to go when you need to ‘go there’. Finally, he symbolizes three wounds that, through addressing them, lead us from the mundane in to the more of the sacred. The first, human, one is to be separated from mother. Ganesha’s second (male) one was his decapitation by his father and restoration by his uncles (more on that another time), which is his coming-of-age. The third wound is unnecessary and comes out of curiosity and desire. Ganesha writes with his broken tusk. We cross the threshold in to puja, in to bringing ourselves up and out, telling the life we live in an interesting way.
Om gam ganapataye namahah
Thank you for this.
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