The way we pray is the way we become and who we are!

As we walk the spiritual path, the way we pray changes…eventually changing us from within.

As beginners …we have specific prayers to ask for certain results in our life that we believe can do us good for e.g getting certain jobs or being married to do and so etc. We decide our goals and then target our prayers to achieve those. Many years back when I was practising Buddhism and met many members, i saw this culture of keeping an “Ichinen sanzen” which means a definite manifestation result and direct all our Buddhist chants to achieve that goal. It was to direct all our energies and intentions to manifest jobs, opportunities, people etc in our life. The power of our minds are actually huge and indeed i was able to manifest really magical things even as magical as curing cancers for me and my parents. But slowly this pushing tires one and u start to live ur life as a continuous set of challenges to overcome rather than an abidance of sweet surrender. You become a warrior of some sort …always pushing ur way forward through life. It hits a wall some day and that day u want to change the way you pray.

The inner revolutions then turn you towards Gurus who promise to solve all your issues in return of your surrender to them. So now you don’t want to do any saadhna or effort since u r so tired. You want the Guru’s grace to save you and give you your desired results. Another trap …as down the years you see what a pawn you have become to their power games and u remain impoverished, weak and stupid.

So you begin to see that your prayers are a really not prayers but a shopping checklist of your desires . Your desires for happiness are dependent on external situations subjects things and places and all your so called prayers are only your egoes manipulative ideas of nobility towards God .you only want things in your prayers you only seek some relief or benefits.

You never seen to question or enquire about the one who is in the reckless pursuit of chasing happiness and finding out the true nature of your own life. This is an important landmark transformation where you begin to see the interconnectedness of everything in this existence and you as a very tiny fragment of this matrix. Your own stories of success and failures really do not matter as you see the generalized nature of suffering and pleasure both. You also feel compassionate and want to help others to realise the same. Your prayer then transforms into a prayer of gratitude ,a prayer of devotion, a prayer of not asking for anything other than being yourself. When you notice that you are everybody else and that everything in this world is happening in its own perfect cosmic intelligence, timing and perfection, their remains nothing to ask or beg for from anybody… neither human nor god. You stop praying and you stop pushing.

Like the flower, the rain and everything else here, you simply exist in your beingness, in your love ,in your devotion and that existence of yours becomes a prayer.

You stop praying!

You become the prayer!