Mamos Puja

In 2011 I discussed the sad condition of mother earth with Drugu Choegyal Rinpoche and I asked him what prayers could be done for the earth in his tradition. He then told me about the Mamos Puja - a ritual used to help keep society in harmony with the natural world.

This ceremony will now take place for a fifth time in India in June 2023. It will be a closed puja (prayer ceremony) but those involved request 'people of faith' to hold the practitioners and our world in prayer during this Puja.

mamos puja

Rinpoche's explanation of the Mamos Puja is as follows:

Disasters and suffering are increasing all over the world, despite humanity's material progress. Unending greed and hatred are disturbing the whole of existence without limit. Human minds are so disturbed by selfishness. Nature is suffering, and the consequence of this is to upset the whole living environment, which includes the most important forces behind all the Motherly supportive feminine forces.

The great realized ancient Masters of Tibetan Buddhism understood all this and advised the Tibetans to perform this ancient Mamos Puja in times of darkness.

The Mamos are the extremely powerful goddesses (described by Rinpoche as "feminine super nature") abiding in earth, fire, wind, sea, mountains, and space, throughout our entire solar system. (Ma means Mother and Mo means female.) When nature is disturbed, the Mamos/mothers become disturbed, and then the earth becomes disturbed as a result. When the Mamos are upset, this also affects people's minds. (Of course, this is because of our interconnectedness in the sacred web of life.) There is one example of a Mamo described in the "Life of Milarepa;" otherwise it would seem that there is nothing one can read about the Mamos anywhere that is translated into English.

In the "Life of Milarepa," it is written that one of the very High Queen Goddesses of the Himalaya was sick, and invited Milarepa to give a blessing to heal her. Some people had done something negative (disrespectful) to the local environment and so the Goddess had become sick. As a result, the local people were also becoming sick and natural disasters were occurring. And so Milarepa gave the blessing to heal her. He also advised the local people not to disturb the natural environment, to maintain ethical behavior, and to perform prayers to bring blessings to the region. As they did so the area regained health and happiness and became free from natural disasters.

This puja is an ancient Tantric ritual practice that helps heal all the Mamos in the entire solar system. The ceremony calms down the Mamos' irritation and gives healing blessings to them. This helps to stop wars by not allowing evil forces to arise in the minds of humanity, and helps to prevent epidemics and natural disasters.

During the Mamos Puja, the Rinpoche Masters, yogis, yoginis, Bhikhyus, Bhentes, and nuns meditate on a wrathful Buddha and use that practice to communicate with the Mamos. The meditators attract the Mamos' attention and transmit blessings to them to soothe their aggression and help them calm down. They then inspire the Mamos to generate loving kindness and bring many of the Mamos to take a vow to bring peace, harmony, and health to the entire world.

mamos puja

Rinpoche also said how he enjoyed reading The Return of the Feminine and the World Soul, by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, and how much he feels the importance of all human beings' love, respect, and care for each other; and of all the joy of their differences; and of their shared love for the world at this time. He quoted from the book:

"Beyond our present ecological self-destruction, caused by industrial pollution, by the chemicals, toxins and particularly carbon that our civilization emits, lies our desire for material progress, the demon of consumerism and greed that walks with heavy boots over the sacred soil of our world. At the root of our predicament is a deep disregard for the environment and for the consequences of our actions, until it is too late. This is a product of a consciousness that is cut off from the natural world and its interconnectedness. It comes from an attitude that we are separate from the world around us and can do with the world what we want – an attitude that is unthinkable to indigenous people who respect and revere the physical world, and whose cultures protect the balance between humanity and nature."

mamos puja

More Words Relevant to the Mamos Puja

"If you will think of ourselves as coming out of the earth, rather than having been thrown in here from somewhere else, you see that we are the earth, we are the consciousness of the earth. These are the eyes of the earth. And this is the voice of the earth."

Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth"



"Holy Mother Earth, the trees and all nature, are witnesses to your thoughts and deeds."

A Winnebago saying



"…I am the murmur of leaves rustling.
I am the rays of the sun,
I am the beam of the moon and stars,
I am the power of trees growing,
I am the bud breaking into blossom…"

The Black Book of Carmarthen



"Indigenous teachings embrace the divine feminine in a way that is crucial for healing ourselves and the earth. For thousands of years, it has been known that everything that exists in this world is alive and has a spirit. We are connected to a web of life that is impacted by the behavior of all that is alive…"

Sandra Ingerman (Contemporary Shaman)



"…the World Soul could express its dark side, like the Kali side of the feminine, and become incredibly destructive. That is a very real possibility. Because as we have forgotten the world is a living being, we have also forgotten the powers of creation can get angry. That forgetting belongs to the masculine myth of domination and control that says we can control nature. We believe that nothing too bad can happen, since, as we're told, nature is not really alive. But this is not so. This is why in ancient times, the people were very careful in their relationship to nature and the spirits of nature, why they learned how to talk to nature and to be present within nature, and how to listen to it, how to make a living relationship with it. Now you go out on the freeways and the shopping malls and the TV channels and it isn't there; there isn't even memory of it, let alone any sense of how to bring it alive…"

"We can include the Earth in our prayers and in our awareness…If we have any duty to the whole, if there is anything we owe to creation, we should remember the world in our prayers and meditation. The world's soul is present as part of us, crying out for our remembrance."

Llewellyn Vaughan- Lee

mamos puja