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The Meaning of Prayer

Nature is impartial; it cannot be flattered by prayers. It does not grant any special favours on request. Humans are not fallen creatures but rising angels. Prayers are answered by the power of their own minds.

ACCORDING to Buddhism, humans are potential masters of themselves. Only because of their deep ignorance do they fail to realise their full potential. Since the Buddha has shown this hidden power, people must cultivate their minds and try to develop it by realising their innate ability.

A story will illustrate this point. An eagle once laid her egg in the nest of a hen. The hen hatched the eagle’s egg along with her own. The hatchlings then followed the mother hen about as she taught them to focus on the ground to find their food. The eaglet, thinking it was a chicken did the same. One day however, it saw an eagle flying high up in the sky, and decided to do the same. The other chickens laughed at him, but he did not care. Everyday he perservered until one day he became strong enough and soared up into the air and became a lord of the skies, while the other chickens continued to eke out a living on the ground. We must think like that eagle.

Buddhism gives full responsibility and dignity to human beings. It makes them their own masters. According to Buddhism, no higher being sits in judgement over a person’s affairs and destiny. That is to say, our life, our society, our world, is what you and I want to make out of it, and not what some other unknown being wants it to be.

Remember that nature is impartial; it cannot be flattered by prayers. Nature does not grant any special favours on request. Thus in Buddhism, prayer is meditation which has self-change as its object. Prayer in meditation acts as an aid to recondition one’s nature. It is the transforming of one’s inner nature accomplished by the purification of the three faculties—thought, word and deed. Through meditation, we can understand that ‘we become what we think’, in accordance with the discoveries of psychology. When we pray, we experience some relief in our minds; that is, the psychological effect that we have created through our faith and devotion. After reciting certain verses we also experience the same result. Religious names or symbols are important to the extent that they help to develop devotion and confidence, but must never be considered as ends in themselves.

The Buddha Himself has clearly expressed that neither the recital of holy scriptures, nor self-torture, nor sleeping on the ground, nor the repetition of prayers, penances, hymns, charms, mantras, incantations and invocations can bring the real happiness of Nirvana, only purification of the mind through self effort can do this.

Regarding the use of prayers for attaining the final goal, the Buddha once used an analogy of a man who wants to cross a river. If he sits down and prays, imploring that the far bank of the river will come to him and carry him across, then his prayer will not be answered. If he really wants to cross the river, he must make some effort; he must find some logs and build a raft, or look for a bridge or construct a boat or perhaps swim. Somehow he must work to get across the river. Likewise, if he wants to cross the river of Samsara, prayers alone are not enough. He must work hard by living a religious life, by controlling his passions, calming his mind, and by getting rid of all the impurities and defilements in his mind. Only then can he reach the final goal.

Prayer alone will never take him to the final goal. If prayer is necessary, it should be to strengthen and focus the mind and not to beg for gains. The following prayer of a poet teaches us how to pray. Buddhists can regard this as meditation to cultivate the mind:

‘Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it. Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved, but for the patience to win my freedom.’

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Редакция перевода от 01.07.2015 20:01