Why should one pray?

Hello friends, carrying on with the theme, ‘Return to nature’, another important aspect of living is one’s mental or rather emotional well being. So, how to have a stable emotional condition naturally? Answer is one means to attain mental stability is prayer.

Prayer. A colleague of mine always says during her prayer session, ‘prayer is the conversation between man and god…’ indeed it is. It comes from the Latin word, ‘precare’, meaning to beg. It is a supplication to a higher force in the universe asking for protection or thanking it or him for his grace.

Prayer can be done by any religious group or an atheist. It can be done individually or in groups. Prayers can be ritualistic like the yajna or homa of Brahminism or simplistic. It can be read out from a book like the hymns of Vedic India or psalms of Christianity or said extempore. In form, it consists of praise, gratitude and petition.

In my alma mater, a convent school in my hometown, I had seen a wall picture of an ocean in the setting sun and the caption read like this: ‘Do not pray for an easy life, but pray to be a strong person.’ It struck me and I still feel strength at testing times whenever I recall that quote. You might ask me, why do we need to pray at all? Some scientist had even gone to the length of studying the effects of prayer on healing to assess whether prayer helps to heal. But I feel we need to pray not because of any empirical evidence showing prayer helps to heal but because one finds a means to unburden his heart and surrender himself totally. And what happens as a result. Your all time companion, stress goes on a vacation with this. I came across another quote. It said, ‘what did you gain by praying? Nothing. But I lost my anger, frustration, greed, insecurity, selfishness, dissatisfaction, jealousy, hurt, pain, regret, remorse, sadness, despair. Sometimes the loss is the gain.’ Don’t you agree?  

In a path of yoga, bhakti yoga, prayer is the means to enlightenment. A treatise on bhakti yoga, Narada Bhakti Sutra says, ‘yallabdhva puman siddho bhavati, trupto bhavati, amrito bhavati.’ (Having attained god awareness, one becomes perfect, contented and immortal). Being in close association with the divine, one becomes faultless, does not have desires and being one with godhead becomes immortal.

To discuss about principles, naturopathy talks of the necessity of praying twice a day. Dr B Venkat Rao in his treatise on Panchatantra espouses one should pray twice a day. In the morning, after waking up one should pray to thank the higher powers for the restful sleep and granting us a new day. You can never tell whether we will wake up in the morning when we go to sleep. He says we should pray at night before going to bed. We should thank the higher powers for guiding us through the day and asking for forgiveness for any mistakes.

All this is about philosophy, but what does science have to say about this. Several studies have been done to assess the potency of prayer to heal, but I feel the direction of research was wrong. Rather than the effect on healing, effect on the mental state of the person praying should be looked into. Psychology propounds that the patient needs to find the resource to deal with life situations. And the resources refer both physical and psychological. While physical resources refer to money, property and stuff, psychological refers to mental strength, self confidence, faith in divine, right perspective to life situations and so on. Here, faith in the divine or higher power helps many a people to garner strength to sail through difficult times.

In yogic lore, the prayers are addressed to the elements and formless super power and it is non- sectarian in approach. Any human being is free to chant the shanti mantra.

It goes like this:

sarve bhavantu sukhinah

sarve santu niramayah

sarve bhadrani pashyantu

ma kaschit dukhabhag bhavet

om shanti shanti shantih.

The meaning is: May all be happy, may all be free of diseases may all see things auspicious and may all be free of misery, om peace, peace, peace. Do you see any mention of religion, caste, creed or races? There is not any.

Hence, the lesson for today is to pray. So, here are today’s mantras for praying:

• Set aside a time for prayer.
• Form can be decided according to one’s preference: Individual or group, ritualistic or simple.
• Hymns and mantras chanting are helpful for some. Or play the recorded chants in a low volume.
• Ambience should be quiet and cosy.
• You can burn some fragrant incense sticks.
• Surrender your whole self to the entity you are addressing.
• Express all your fears and worries.
• Pray for not a solution but the means to solve the problem and the strength for it.

Keep praying people.
sarve bhavantu sukhinah (may all be blessed)

Roshni