The main form of worship is used in the Vedic and Yogic teaching is temple worship, attending the pujas or ritual worship of the Gods and Goddesses. Pujas are short rituals and consist of chants, flowers, lamps, incense and food and water, etc. offered to the Divine, usually in the form of a statue enshrined in the temple. Puja itself means flower offering. It symbolises the natural opening of the heart to the Divine the way a flower naturally unfolds its petals. Pujas are to be done with the same purity, openness, receptivity and innocence, a spontaneous updwelling of our innate love of life.

The seers saw in this flower offering the natural form of worship, nature’s ultimate expression of love of God, and they sought to embody in it our human lives. Flowers are relatively new comers to evolution and parallel the evolution of mammals. They are the vegetable kingdom’s counterpart of devotion. Hence, they link us up to the aspiration of Nature herself, to the Divine’s seeking of the Divine in its own creative play.

Pujas are done regularly several times a day. They are far more informal than any church service, and watches them takes but a few minutes. Pujas can also be done in one’s home. Many are simple enough to do oneself. More complicated pujas may require a trained priest, but in the Vedic Dharma what we do for ourselves is usually considered better than what we have others do for us, as it is the Self itself which is the Divine. Often a puja is no more than lighting a ghee lamp before a deity. It is usually one’s own personal worship, however imperfect, that is best, as it alone can provide an opening to the Divine within.

Usually puja is combined with meditation, as mediation is the primary mode of inner worship. Puja purifies our environment, our senses and emotions to allow for a deeper meditation in the mind. Hence, after any puja we should sit and meditate if but for a moment.

Quoted from "From the River of Heaven" by David Frawley