About Guru Puja (Lama Chöpa) at Maitripa College
Traditionally, the Guru Puja is celebrated on the 10th and 25th days of the Tibetan calendar. This puja lasts around 2 hours and consists of the recitation of a sadhana, visualizations, and prayers, including taking refuge and generating bodhicitta. Mantras, praises and requests are also usually recited. You may participate at whatever level you feel comfortable.
Please check the community calendar here for upcoming Guru Puja dates as well as details on our two-week retreat in Summer 2024.
“I thought to mention the importance of practicing Guru Puja, which was advised by Pabongka Rinpoche as the most important essential practice in our life, the integration of guru yoga, lamrim and thought transformation. It is Gyalwa Ensapa’s traditional practice, and it contains the quickest means to achieve enlightenment.
Guru Puja is the most profound secret that all those great yogis, Saraha, Naropa, Tilopa, Marpa, Milarepa, and all those in the Lama Tsongkhapa tradition who achieved enlightenment in a brief lifetime of degenerated time, including Lama Tsongkhapa disciple’s disciple, Gyalwa Ensapa, Drubchen Chökyi Dorje and all those many others—the essential thing that made them achieve enlightenment in a brief lifetime of degenerated time is by this practice, the guru yoga.
Among the guru yogas, this guru yoga is very special because it is the integration of all those other various practices. So if you can, by doing this practice then you receive the blessing of the guru, and by purification and collecting extensive merit, everything comes, actualizing lamrim realizations, everything.”
~Lama Zopa Rinpoche; April 28, 2003
