What is prayer? Is it a collection of sacred syllables we chant every day, without understanding its meaning? Is it the holy names of the various gods that we repeat every day with closed eyes? Or is it scriptures we read without understanding its meaning or imbibing its essence?
Prayer is much more than all these things put together. Words chanted without the feeling of devotion, compassion and love are just words, they cannot become a prayer. Prayer is an attitude, it’s a way of life. Three people in my life have shaped my definition of prayer. My guru Sadguru Mata Amritanandamayi Devi always says that being compassionate, saying a few consoling words, being kind to a person, is a prayer by itself.
My late father used to tell me that one needn’t visit a temple every day to show one’s devotional attitude. One can worship God from the confines of one’s house. My dad would say that the five minutes I spend in a temple praying, will go to waste if I emerged from the temple resumed my attitude of getting irritated and judging people. I hadn’t seen my father reading many scriptures, but I had witnessed his helpful nature, no one who came to him for help, be it a businessman, a driver or an electrician, returned empty-handed.
For me that is the biggest prayer, helping everyone unconditionally. My father would always say, “that my house is like a temple,” this was obvious from the fact that everyone who came to our house would always get prasad in the form of candy, biscuits, mithai, chocolates. My father always carried a pocketful of sweets to hand out to his acquaintances. And dad never passed judgement on anyone. Isn’t that one of the best prayers?
The third person who has influenced me is my mother, though she prays a lot, mention any holy text and rest assured she would have read it. Her attitude of seeing God in the less fortunate, feeding them, is one of my favourite prayers. Whenever any festival comes around, mom is quick to start doling out food to people unable to celebrate the festivals because of financial reasons. With such amazing teachers in life, no wonder my definition of prayer is unique.