When Life Itself Becomes Puja

A single flame offered before the dark, adorned form of the Goddess — the quiet reminder that every life-choice is an offering into Her fire.

 

“She keeps testing me to this day, testing how steadfast I am.
My God, the number of tests She puts you through is unimaginable.
She’ll take you right up to the last minute to test whether you’re going to stand on your faith.
And that’s exactly when you have to stand firm, because only then will She give it to you.”
— Guruji Amritananda 

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Vira Chandra: One of the most shocking things I have seen in my spiritual life was this:
people who knew the truth — not vaguely, not half-heartedly, but with full intellectual clarity —
yet chose to act as if they did not know.
Why? Because to live it fully would have cost them everything:
their position, their honor, their religious institutions, their comfortable place in the world.

 

That is when I began to see that puja is not only what we do in temples.
Real puja happens when the Goddess suddenly places you at a threshold
and asks whether you will stay true,
even if it means losing what you most want to keep.

 

In the temple, puja is performed with flowers, incense, lamps, and mantras.
But in life, puja is performed with choices, temptations, and thresholds.

• The lamp is the sudden light of clarity —
  the moment you know exactly what is true.

• The flower is the sweetness offered to you —
  recognition, love, validation, comfort.

• The incense is the fragrance of reputation —
  what others think of you, the name you carry.

• The mantra is the story you repeat —
  the narrative that justifies your choices, whether honest or false.

• And the offering into the flame is always the same:
  your mask, your craving, your attachment.

 

Each puja is personal. Each threshold is unique.
For one, it is the security of a prestigious academic chair,
a position revered by students and peers,
but quietly draining away the living presence of the Goddess.
For another, it is the relationship that feels like oxygen to the heart,
yet corrodes integrity at its root.
For another, it is the taste of power and control,
the comfort of being praised,
the sweetness of being “seen.”

 

The Goddess does not test only once.
You may choose rightly today, and for a moment think you have “caught God.”
But tomorrow another mask is offered,
more subtle, more tailored, more tempting than the last.
There is no immunity, no certificate of completion.
As Guruji said, “She keeps testing me to this day.”

 

And this is the puja of life:
not performed once and finished,
but repeated endlessly, in countless forms.
At each threshold the question is whispered again:

 

"Do you want the mask?
Or do you want Me?"

 

Real puja is not about suppression, nor indulgence.
It is about standing still in the fire of temptation without collapsing into it.
It is offering not flowers and incense, but your very craving —
placing it into Her flame,
and letting it burn.

 

And so the altar is not somewhere far away.
It is this very life.
The puja is not arranged.
It is given.
And the only offering She asks is this:

What will you choose?