Medicine Buddha for Health

“If one meditates on the Medicine Buddha, one will eventually attain enlightenment, but in the meantime one will experience an increase in healing powers both for oneself and others and a decrease in physical and mental illness and suffering.”

This ritual, when performed in conjunction with medical treatment, helps to enhance the healing power of medicine or surgery by invoking the enlightening influence of the Medicine Buddha.

Tara Puja for Long Life

Tara is the principal female manifestation of enlightenment in the Buddhist tradition. She is specifically associated with practices designed to lengthen one’s lifespan and overcome life-threatening hindrances. The Four Mandala Offering Ritual of Tara serves as a community practice. As Tara dispels personal and global obstacles, we come together to ensure the ongoing stability of the monastery, its community, and ourselves.

This puja is led by the venerable Gyuto monks, and we recite the prayer both in Tibetan and English. Everyone is welcome. Participants can bring flowers, fruits, and candles for offering.

Mahakala Puja

Every month, following to the lunar calendar, the venerable monks at Gyuto Foundation perform a Mahakala Puja dedicated to all sentient beings. Monks also perform short Mahakala pujas early in the morning and in the evening every day privately.

Mahakala is the wrathful aspect of Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha of Compassion. The main role of Mahakala is to fulfill the four enlightened activities of pacifying interferences, increasing favorable circumstances, gaining control over situations and, when all else fails, destroying obstacles with wrathful force.

Everyone is welcome. All the participants can bring flowers, fruits and candles, etc. for the altar. The Mahakala Puja will be recited in Tibetan and no translation will be available. Please sit comfortably and meditate while the monks are performing the puja.

Cha-Sum Puja

Also called “The Ritual of Three Parts,” this puja is said to eliminate obstacles which occur in one’s life and spiritual practice. It is often performed by lamas for the sake of one who is sick, when the illness is thought to be caused by a class of spirits. This ritual follows the injunctions of the Buddha, who taught that one should not harm any living being, even those who do harm to oneself, and therefore, rather than using wrathful means to harm the interfering spirits, one offers them tormas, praises, and various offerings such as water, flowers, incense, lights, perfume, food, and music.

Long-Life Puja Ritual

These two rituals, in conjunction with healthy living and proper medical attention, help to extend one’s life span through invoking the enlightening influence of two female Buddha-figures who have especially dedicated themselves to this purpose: Tara and Namgyalma.

Guru Puja (Lama Chopa)

Twice a month, following the lunar calendar, the practice of Tsog Offering or Guru Puja is performed. It is a commitment for those practicing tantra to restore and reaffirm their vows and pledges. However, anyone and everyone is welcome to attend this ritual of making offerings to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and accumulating the positive energy needed to progress along the spiritual path. Lama is the Tibetan word for Guru, and Choepa is the Tibetan word for offering. Participants can bring food or flowers as offerings. The ritual and offering takes approximately one hour. If you have a bell and vajra, you are welcome to bring them and participate in the ritual. Everyone is invited and it’s free.

Vajrasattva Practice

The Vajrasattva Practice is for mental and physical purification. It is the most powerful purification practice in daily life. Vajrasattva is the deity that embodies the purification powers of all the Buddhas. If one practices sincerely with the correct motivation, all the negativities we have accumulated in this life and previous lives can be removed.

So-Jong Confession Ceremony

So-jong is the act of following one day ‘lay’ precepts and is a purification ritual. Buddhists follow So-jong on holy days and full, half and new moon days. The precepts are the same as monastic precepts, except that instead of taking them for life, the practitioner takes them one day at a time. They are a very effective way to help train the body and speech of a lay practitioner, which will help with one’s meditation practice.

Doing the So-jong practice is one of the three duties of monks and nuns. (The other two are yarne, the summer retreat, and gaye, the ceremony at the conclusion of the summer retreat.) All Sangha members are required to join the ceremony but lay members are not required to do this practice.

Sixteen Arhats Puja

With this puja we call upon Shakyamuni Buddha and the 16 Arhats to continue to shower their compassion and protection upon sentient beings in samsara and ask them not to pass into Nirvana. We praise the Arhats and pray that they bless our glorious gurus with long lives and ask for their help so that the Dharma may flourish everywhere. Participants can bring fruits, cookies, flowers, candles, etc. for the altar.

Everyone is welcome to join the prayers.

White Tara Practice

Tara, the Liberator Mother, is the embodiment of enlightened wisdom and compassion in feminine form, and one of the most important deities in the Tantric Buddhist tradition. Like a mother caring for her only child, Tara nurtures all living beings with her unconditional love and compassion. In her white form, Tara embodies enlightenment energy directed at healing, peace, prosperity, long life, overcoming of obstacles, and good fortune.