Puja

Puja is a word for ceremony. A puja, the way we have learned them in Southern India, is a ceremony that involves offerings of fire, earth, air, and water, and — most importantly — of love. It is a tantric practice based on the idea that the divine is hiding in everything, waiting to be woken up through our conscious engagement with it.

Puja comes in many forms. It may be a fire ceremony, a water ceremony, a flower ceremony. It may be to a statue of a deity, or to a person, to a tree, or even to an elephant (though to be fair, we don't do many of those in London). The idea is that by honouring something apparently separate and physical as though it is divine, we wake up the divine inside of everything, and we feel it all around us. We remember we are that.

Puja can be very blissful and can be a gateway to the experience of unconditional love. Gayatri offers both Hindu and multifaith pujas and ceremonies at different times of the year. They often involve flower petals, mantras, flame, incense and community. They are better experienced than described — so come and check it out!