So what is the best reason to pray?
Have you ever thought about it? I would like to suggest that the best reason to pray is because you’ve been told to do it.
“Oh no!!!!” (I can just hear our modern narcissistic minds freaking out over that.) “You can’t tell me what to do!”
Right?
But once we calm down and start looking at it we can see it’s good to be told to pray. It’s actually the best reason because it holds the selfishness down.
I’ve been thinking about the story given to us by our Navajo Elder Wally. The story about when the Holy people discovered that the five fingered beings, human beings, were creating a lot of trouble in the world. They had become too powerful and they were destroying the world with their power. The reason was because they had been given words. They’d been given language, and they were using this power to to create too much destructive stuff. So the holy people decided to take the words away.
But the five fingered beings came to them four times asking. “Please don’t take language away.”
Finally the holy people said, “Okay we won’t do it if you pray, and if you pray properly.”
They told them to pray because praying brings us back in balance if it’s done right. If it’s done correctly. A good prayer has a story and a meaning to it. You’re being told something by some sort of wiser thing outside of you. You’re not the boss of everything. And a prayer is something you give, rather than asking to get something. You’re part of this bigger thing and you are offering a prayer. So you’re praying for no reason other than the fact that you’ve been told to.
Think of all the other reasons we have to pray. Many of them are a subtle greed. We do a lot of ecstatic prayers these days: Dancing, and Kirtan, and singing, and chanting. Things like that bring us into a state of ecstasy… which is something we really like. It’s wonderful! It feels sacred and it’s good to do it now and again. But if ecstasy is the reason you’re doing it, then that’s just ego desire. It’s desire. You feel separate, which is a subtle constant anguish, and so you want something to make you feel better. States of bliss are a wonderful vacation from the mind. It’s actually healthy and relaxing. So we have to be careful about motivation.
The easiest way to take away the ego desire is to change the reason you are doing spiritual practice. Stop doing practices for the bliss, and start doing it because you’ve been told to. This creates a subtle but magic difference in a practice of chanting Kirtan, or in dancing. We’re not doing it for ourselves. We’ve been told to do this by the holy people.
Of course… as in all things, I might be completely wrong! But this is a simple and interesting way to change our perception about praying. It’s easy to give it a try.
Watch the video that’s with this article and we’ll do a singing prayer.
We’ll be singing to the elephant-headed god Ganesha. In fact, Ganesha’s dad cut his head off, and then went “oops” and went and found him another head. He put the elephant head on and became this powerful being. So we think of Ganesha as the remover of obstacles. This is a being of strength, because elephants are so strong.
Ganesha Sharanam. Sharanam Ganesha. We’re singing to Ganesha because we’ve been told to.