Puja Resources

Performing a puja is thought to be of great benefit to both yourself and anyone you think of benefitting while you do it, particularly if you develop a strong positive intention before you start. This help create lots of positive energy which can then be directed to help as many people, animals and other beings as much as possible.

This page provides information about and guidance on how to practice the following pujas:

(clicking on a puja will take you straight to that section of the page)

Tara Puja

“The actions of all the buddhas have manifested in the aspect of Tara, to grant the wishes of us sentient beings. Hence it is very important for us to pray to her. Because many of us do have close contact with Tara and because of her great compassion and love for all sentient beings, if we pray to her with great sincerity and faith, taking refuge in and relying on her completely, she can definitely help eliminate hindrances and bring success in spreading the pure teachings of the Buddha” – Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Suggested Reading & Other Materials

Guided Tara Puja (filmed at Land of Joy)

Land of Joy use FPMT’s Four Mandala Offerings to Chittamani Tara text for our Tara pujas. If you don’t have a copy of the practice please click here to access and download the text.

We hope this video and audio will help you feel confident in giving the puja a go, as well as feeling you have company and being inspired by Land of Joy’s altar.

Guided Tara Puja (Mostly Tibetan Tunes recorded at Land of Joy)

Medicine Buddha Puja

“The Medicine Buddha puja is something that can be done for people who are dying, or who have already passed away, and also for individual success in all kinds of activities. This Medicine Buddha practice is extremely powerful and beneficial especially when it is done with extensive offerings beautifully arranged.

It is also excellent at preventing and helping natural disasters involving fire, wind, water, and air, including tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes. It also helps with world peace, stopping war and famine, disease and torture, poverty and sickness. It increases happiness in the area where it is performed and the rest of the world.” – Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Suggested Reading & Other Materials
Guided Medicine Buddha Puja (filmed at Land of Joy)

Land of Joy use FPMT’s The Wish Fulfilling Jewel practice when offering Medicine Buddha pujas. You can purchase it for a small price on FPMT’s foundation store by clicking here. Having the text will allow you to take part in the practice whilst listening to the recording.

Lama Chöpa

During this practice, we invoke all the lamas of the graduated path lineage beginning with Shakyamuni Buddha himself, extending to our present direct teachers who have shown us the path. We pay homage to them, make offerings, and request each of them to please bless our minds with the same realisations that they themselves have generated. By offering sincere, heartfelt requests, we make our minds ripe to receive the full blessings of this precious lineage and quickly actualize the realizations we need to attain enlightenment. If we wish to experience realisations quickly, the practice of Lama Chopa is indispensable.

“Practicing this Guru Puja, which is an integration of the three deities, makes it much easier to achieve enlightenment in a brief life of this degenerated time. Doing this practice every day, with purification and many infinite skies of merit, brings the mind closer to the path to enlightenment and closer to enlightenment itself, and so much closer to freeing all sentient beings from obscurations and suffering and leading them to enlightenment. Putting the meaning of this into practice in ones life makes each day extremely rich and worthwhile”. – Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Suggested Reading & Other Materials
Guided Lama Chöpa Practice (filmed at Land of Joy)

Land of Joy use the Lama Chöpa practice composed by Jetsun Losang Chökyi Gyältsen which includes prayers recommended by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. You can find it on FPMT’s foundation store by clicking here. Having the text will mean you can take part in the practice whilst listening to the recordings.

Heruka Vajrasattva Tsog

This Heruka Vajrasattva Tsog offering was written by Lama Yeshe. About the practice he said, “What follows is a tsog offering ceremony specifically designed to be performed in conjunction with the highest yoga tantra aspect of Vajrasattva. The Tibetan term tsog, which is often left untranslated, literally means “collection,” or “assembly,” and in the following practice it is often rendered as “pure offering.” However, the actual tsog is one’s meditation on transcendental, blissful wisdom.

The entire purpose of offering the tsog ingredients is to generate the experience of this blissful wisdom within oneself and to overcome the ordinary appearance and conception of sensory objects. Thus, it is extremely important that from the very beginning of this practice you prevent ordinary appearances and conceptions from arising. Because the offering of tsog is a profound method for transcending mundane thought, the entire practice should go beyond your ordinary experience of subject
and object.” [fpmt.org]

Suggested Reading & Other Materials

Please Note: This practice requires the student to have permission/empowerment received from a qualified master in order to engage in the self-generation of the deity. However, it is permitted to do this practice without such an empowerment as long as you do not generate yourself as the deity. Instead, you should generate the deity at the crown of your head or in front of you instead of self-generation. [fpmt.org]

Heruka Vajrasattva Tsog Offering (puja text) by Lama Thubten Yeshe

Offering Tsok to Heruka Vajrasattva DVD by Lama Yeshe

Lama Yeshe Offering Tsok to Heruka Vajrasattva: Puja Audio & Slide Show from Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive

Offering Tsog to Heruka Vajrasattva by Lama Yeshe: Talk 1. Made Available by Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive

Offering Tsog to Heruka Vajrasattva by Lama Yeshe: Talk 2. Made Available by Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive

Offering Tsog to Heruka Vajrasattva by Lama Yeshe: Talk 3. Made Available by Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive

English chanting by Paula Chichester

Shakyamuni Buddha Puja

“I want to introduce the Guru Shakyamuni puja, which I found very beneficial for the mind, and especially, I thought, for developing bodhichitta and entering into the bodhisattva deeds – the extensive, hard bodhisattva deeds. It gives great inspiration to sacrifice oneself for sentient beings equaling the sky. And also there are offering practices and frequent seven limb practices, which are repeated again and again and which purify obstacles and accumulate merits.” – Lama Zopa Rinpoche

“Shakyamuni Buddha Puja – The Source of Good Collections: A Rite of Homage, Worship, and Prayer to the Teacher, the King of Sages, Remembering His Previous Lives and Biography by Ngawang Paldan is an extensive puja including elaborate offerings, praises to Shakyamuni Buddha, and homage to Shakyamuni Buddha’s previous lives and detailed biography.” [Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition]

Suggested Reading & Other Materials