To Sergio and all: Flowers, days for puja etc. (questions)

[Guest guest]

Namaste Sergio and all:

1. you can offer real flowers, or just offer virtual flowers from your

heart. Or, purchase some nice small artificial flowers. Maa and Swami

always offers real flowers at the Mandir. It is nice to do that, but

gets costly. I have geraniums in pots growing on my deck and pick

fresh flowers from them year round. That is not expensive.

 

2. it may take you an hour to to the entire Begginner Puja book, cover

to cover, in the beginning, but as your progress, it takes less time.

Without the calisa at the end of the book, I do the puja in 15-20

minutes. I do the puja daily, and do not know what day is auspicious.

In my opinion, you do your best and perfrom the entire puja when you

have the time. The more you do the puja, the more Durga will draw you

in and you will want to spend the time. Other things in your life

will begin to be lessw attractive and Durga will be more attractive

and you will have more time to spend with Her.

 

3. everytime you perform any puja, or recitation of the names of a

Deity,or sit at the sacred fire to do mantras or the Chandi, or even

to performa daily mantra recitation which you have as a sankalpa: you

always begin with your statement of sankalpa. See Page 28 of the

Chandi Path, or look at any text. The statement of sanklapa is

included in every form of worship because it helps you establish and

state who you are, where you are, and what you propose to do at this

time and place.

 

Hope this helps

 

Jai ma Jai Swmi

 

vishweshwar

 

 

 

 

-- In , " Sergio Knipe " <sergio.knipe

wrote:

>

> Namaste.

>

> Just a few more questions for the list & #8211; hope you don & #8217;t

mind!

>

> 1) I was looking at the Durga puja for beginners, and it seems like

there

> is a lot of flower offering involved. The Sanskrit term used is

> & #8216;gandhapushpa & #8217;, which means & #8216;fragrant flower & #8217;.

> Now, I was wondering whether real flowers are always offered, or whether

> these may be substituted with other things, such as flower petals. I am

> asking this because in the course of the puja around 30 flowers are

> offered, and these are a lot & #8211; particularly if one wishes to

perform

> the puja every day. This leads me to my second question:

>

> 2) At the moment, it seems like performing the whole puja would take me

> well over 20 minutes (I would probably guess around 1 hour). So I was

> wondering what days might be most auspicious to perform the rite, if I

> cannot perform it all mornings. I believe Fridays are good, or is this

> only for the recitation of the Sahasranama? This leads to my third and

> final question:

>

> 3) I have heard Swamiji say that the recitation of the 300 names of

Lalita

> is more effective than the recitation of the 1,000. So clearly then,

for a

> beginner like myself, the recitation of the former would be better

(not to

> mention easier!). I was wondering whether it is fine only to recite the

> actual names, or whether one should recite them in the context of the

> Lalita Trishati. I was also wondering about metric: my recitation is

more

> of a reading, as I was never taught any of the musical modulations

used in

> reciting the shlokas. Is this ok? The same, of course, also applies

to my

> recitation of the Devi Kavacham and Chandi in general...

>

> Any answers, as always, will be much appreciated.

>

> Jai Maa!

>

> Sergio

>