Cultivating Bhakti Through Pūjā

By Kavitha Chinnaiyan

There’s a certain kind of magic in deity yoga, where we develop an intimate relationship with the deity, the object of our adoration. Pūjā is the procedure of developing this deep and sweet intimacy.*

The word “pūjā” is made up of pū, which means to purify or cleanse, and jā, which means birth. Essentially then, pūjā is a ritual of adoration of a deity with the goal of purifying or sanctifying our lives. Importantly, the deity becomes the ideal through which our lives are beheld and in the way we conduct ourselves from moment to moment.