Shall we Puja?
A Puja is an act of showing reverence to a god, a spirit, or another aspect of the divine through invocations, prayers, songs, and rituals, the one I attended was the one to celebrate the 10th day with the divine mother goddess Durga “we celebrate the victory of the higher self over the lower self”,
The curious girl, who didn’t sleep since I came to the Ashram, couldn’t stay too far from the Puja ceremony, and confidently sat on a high chair in the meditation hall where all is happening.
Big pictures of the founder Swami Sivananda and his disciple Vishnudivananda were hanged on the sides of the glass wide window in the centre of the hall, statues of the three gods (Gunesh, Shiva, Krishna) were situated in the middle, a picture of Jesus and one of Budha were also in between the gods.
The priest and three Swamis sat on the floor and the ceremony begins with chanting mantras followed by some prayers by the priest, then the challenging part starts as he chants the 1000 names of divine mother goddess !! Once is done (and believe me it takes time) then he spreads some “light” over the room, and everyone –except the rebel- stretches out their hands and catch the light, get down on their knees until their forehead touches the floor!
More mantras, then the offering to the gods starts: you take a handful of rose petals from one of the staff and offer them to the god, you bend down and kneel so your forehead touches the floor, then head to the priest and get the blessed red powder dot between your eyebrows, afterwards you can take the pasad (the food offered to the god and cooked by the priest himself) and get back to your seat.
Being present at the ceremony, watching my fellow Europeans copying the behaviours & blending in the tradition, mostly not understanding a word of what they are chanting and blindly following without knowing why they are doing this or that, and being the only who missed “catching the light” and didn’t get on my knees made me reflect on how we as humans -despite our superficial differences- are so similar in finding it difficult if we are not belonging to something or a group of people,
I can assure you, it’s quite hard to confidently stand outside the crowd and yet still be with them.
(Part 7)
