Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Puja - A Child Game ?!



Jai Gurudev !!







Normally we offer prayers to the divine daily , weekly or special Prayers during festivals. We call it as Puja or Pooja .
Pooja is a Sanskrit word meaning an action that comes out of fullness.
In the sense , Pooja is done as an act of gratitude arising out of fulfillment or contented attitude .


Whenever we say Pooja, the things that come to our mind are  cleansing with  Water   , Flowers , Fruits , Food items offered as Prasad , Incense sticks , Camphors , Aarti , the Bell sound etc.





And also what we can notice here is , the Puja , what we perform is an imitation of what Nature is doing us . Puzzling ?! 



Just bringing to our mind , recollecting our childhoos games , one would not miss out the game played with toys with such an involvement . Generally , a girl child imitates her mom and the boy child would love to imitate his dad.


The girl child will have a toy doll and it's a fun watching her play with it  . She gives bath to the doll , feeds her with a bottle , talks to her , dresses her up and does what all her mom does for her.
 She makes her sleep , nurses her carefully as though the doll baby has fallen ill .
    
    On the otherhand , the boy child would imitate his dad , his profession . He would play as a conductor or a doctor or any profession  . That's a lovely game which no one would have ever missed out in those days of yesteryears - childhood  games . Also , they play the game of the impressive characters , which they see in their daily routine as teachers, milkman, postman , thief, washerman , bus conductor, driver etc . The children would just love playing this imitating games . It's a common sight to watch.                        


If we take a closer look at the way we offer prayers or Puja , it is something similar to the kids game of imitating elders .
For instance , during a Pooja, the place is well cleaned , disinfected with naturally available items like turmeric, cowdung etc and a beautiful design pattern is drawn on the ground with various colours smeared on the patterns called as Rangoli .
Infact , the Divine makes our life colourful , providing us lots of entertainments and each one of our life is like a unique rangoli pattern .
And in that case , are we not imitating the Divine ? 


Then , during the Puja , we decorate the place with flowers , lit lamps , burn the incense sticks to spread the fragrance ,  offer flowers , fruits , various delicacies  , sing songs , play musical instruments and make aartis with Camphor . And then we bow down to God as an act of surrender.








If we observe  , the Divine Nature gives us flowers , fruits , vegetables, Cotton for clothes and literally everything to us .



The Nature causes the birds to chirp - multiple sounds produced by different birds , similar to the vocal songs and instrumental sounds.




 
And the Nature provides us the ample light and heat by making the Sun to move around us , rather makes the Earth move around the Sun
and makes the living on this planet earth a reality . Otherwise, no one can think of life on Earth at all. How kind is the Nature towards us ?!


This is similar to the aarti , we do , in response to the moving around of the sun , an act of gratitude towards the Sun and the Nature , in turn.  

So, do you agree with the fact that we offer prayers or perform Puja to God , as an imitation of  what the Divine Nature does to us , living beings with so much love and care ?!







Love & smiles.....






1 comment:

  1. Wow what a blog this one. Its remember my childhood thanks puja....

    ReplyDelete

It's not you who serve the Guru...but it's the Guru who serves you !!

Last month we(  me and my husband) had gone to attend my cousin's son's wedding in Chennai. They had booked the train tickets to Ba...