PRAYER ALWAYS HAS A PURPOSE
Prayer is centred on a self-conscious and self-judging person relating to an altar. The mode employed by
the person praying is never the same- it differs from person to person. Even for a given person it differs
from time to time. And also, a prayer can be a simple mental or oral chant or a strict elaborate vedic ritual.
There can be three different forms of karma, action, in prayer: physical, kyika, oral- vchika, and mental,
mnasa. Performing a ritual is a physical form of prayer. Singing in praise of the Lord is an oral form of a
prayer while chanting a mantra silently is a mental form of a prayer.
Prayer always has a purpose, just as any action has. You pray because you want something. Without an
object of desire, there is no prayer. You may want something specific or you may want clarity of mind,
anta-karaa-uddhi. You may also pray that the Lord be pleased with your prayer because you want to
be in his good books; you want Him to glance at you now and then. He seems to cast his blessings on
others all the time, but when it comes to you, something happens. Either he blinks or closes his eyes
altogether
Further it looks as though you cannot pray for another person just as you cannot eat for another person.
However, although prayer is an action, it is not like eating. It is more like bathing. Not only can you bathe,
you can also bathe your child. Thus you can pray to achieve something either for yourself or for someone
else. Yet even when you pray for another person, it is still your prayer. When you see someone unhappy,
who is suffering, you also suffer because you are human. You are affected by the other person's condition
and you cannot stand it. You want the person to be happy which really means that you want to be happy.
Therefore, a prayer for others is also for the sake of ones own happiness.
All prayer therefore is only for my sake. When I pray for my wife or child, when I say "may my family be
protected", there is an extended 'I", an 'I' that is affected all the time. I am affected by everything that
goes on around me, be it caused by nature or by other human beings. I need not be an American to be
affected by an American being taken hostage. Every human being will be affected, one he or she knows
the possible consequences of such an action. My prayer, therefore, is to help prevent or bear these
experiences.
THE TWO RESULTS OF A PRAYER
Prayer is effective, whether it is prayer for one's own sake or for another's sake. To see how such a prayer
is effective and how it produces results, we have to analyze the nature of prayer itself.
One result of your prayer is immediate, drashta-phalam. By praying for something, such as clarity of mindanta-karaa-uddhi, you recognize another power higher than yourself. You are also accepting the
limitation of your own power and knowledge. This is simple pragmatism. To be objective you must know
your limitations. Even when you know your limitations often you do not want to accept them.
The fact that you can pray is wonderful because it implies an acceptance on your part, not only your
limitations, but also the existence of a limitless source. This acceptance is a very beautiful thing; it is the
immediate result of prayer. You may call it psychological if you wish, but the result is very evident. It is
not easy to sit and pray; but when you do, a kind of melting happens. Otherwise the ego will not let you
sit and pray.
There is also an unseen result of prayer, adrashta-phala, which involves faith. The one who prays, the
agent of action of a prayer, says "this is what I want" the action and the expressed desire bring about a
result which is subtle in nature, unseen. This unseen result which we call grace will manifest in time. It is
produced by action of prayer and accrues to the one who prays.
KARMA AND PRAYER
If you accept the law of karma, you can come to appreciate that most problems are brought about by the
results of actions done in this life and in past lives. An acute stomach ache or cancer, for instance can be
understood as the result of past karma. You could attribute the problem to heredity or genes which is just
using a different model to explain it; either way is the same thing a different model to explain it; either
way it is the same thing
If you go one step further, you would ask the reason why you were born with these particular genes. Why
should you be in this situation? Why do you not have a different set of parents? If you ask these questions
to a biologist, he or she will give up and say go and ask a Swami. It is not my field!
We say that there is a natural selection of parents that takes place in accordance with certain laws. If there
is such a thing as the soul surviving death, there must be laws that govern the huge network of possible
combinations that determine the soul's next birth. Many aspects have to be arranged such as time and
place of birth, parentage, social position and culture, economic situation and so on, all of which in some
way affect the child who is born. Thus each person has a particular type of karma
Karma is a huge network of laws, which operates purely mechanically. From the standpoint of karma your
stomach-ache may be a result of either past karma done long ago or more recently. It may be due to any
number of reasons- over-eating, alcohol or the conditions of your mind- all of which can be viewed in
terms of either the immediate or remote past. If you worry about karma, you merely add to your misery.
Therefore, worrying is useless.
The past has already happened and cannot be changed. You accept it and pray. Certain damage may have
been done to your stomach because of past events. If so, is there anything you can do about it now? Yes,
you can pray, "let this prayer produce results that will neutralize the past karma".
The law of karma is subtle. We do not know our past karma. We only know that when something occurs,
it may be due to past karma. When extraordinary events take place we cannot immediately account for
the causes, we fall back on some past karma to explain them. Therefore, you win a lottery and call it
punya, or lose something and call it bad luck; all this may be past karma at work. In spite of all your efforts
and plans, situations that we call bad luck keep happening. Karma unfolds every day. What you are doing
right now may be due to past karma. It is just that you cannot see it.
Even the most die-hard atheist explains events in terms of luck. Whenever the person catches a bus, for
instance, and is the last person on, before the bus starts off, he or she exclaims "how wonderful! what
luck!". Similarly, when the person misses the bus, he or she calls it bad luck
People do miss buses in life, and there are a lot of buses. No matter how carefully we plan, at the last
minute something can happen which we think of as bad luck. When such events happen, they indicate
the existence of something that we are not able to lay our hands on. We do not know what it is or how it
unfolds. We only know that it keeps happening and there is some pattern to it. The law of karma explains
that "something."
