What is Prayer?

The Indian philosophy gives us three ways to realize God, the gyan marga, or knowledge, the dharma marga or the action or the bhakti marga or the devotion. Though apparently different, in essence they are same, the basic element being faith. It is the faith that leads to realization, knowledge, action or devotion being just the means. The Gita represents this unique synthesis of knowledge, action and devotion. Psychologically speaking these three aspects are attributes of mind and can be distinguished only in thought and not in action. The Supreme reality manifests itself in different forms to persons seeking to realize it differently, that is through knowledge, action or devotion. To those seeking knowledge it reveals itself as enlightenment to those inclined to action it reveals as righteousness and to those looking to realize it through devotion it reveals as eternal love. People strive to attain the same goal of salvation through these three different paths of knowledge, action and devotion. The difference is not of content but context. And all the three routes are equally effective. However, while gyan and karma are difficult paths to traverse for the common people, bhakti is the easily attainable one as it is flexible and convenient with faith as the only requirement. It is this bhakti that we express through prayers. The object of devotion is the personal God to whom the devotee has to surrender his ego. Absolute dependence and complete faith are essential. When devotion is complete then the individual and his God become suffused into one spiritual entity and reveal themselves as aspects of one being. This is why the Lord asks in Gita that the devotee must merge his mind in God, prostrate himself before God and then come to him. In Bible too, it is said ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ The Love of God is the supreme Love and every other form of love is imperfect.
How do we express this love? Through prayers. There are prayers and prayers. All equally sincere in content and rich in spirit. So there are no effective or ineffective prayers. Devotion is based on complete faith and absolute love of God. The question that often arises is what to ask. And here we mistakenly enter into the transactional mode asking something and commit doing something. But God wants nothing and commands nothing. He is just there a caring, loving, entity who is kind and benevolent. What then should be the ideal prayer? Though there may be many forms, the one that really appealed to me was a two line rhyme that my three year old grandson Atharava had learnt in his play school and used to recite every night before going to bed. It is paraphrased below:
O God! I am ignorant; Bless me so that I acquire knowledge.
It is the essence of all prayers that enlightened souls from Adishankara to Shri Aurbindo have all been emphasizing. All miseries in the world are due to ignorance or avidya removing which leads to salvation. Gandhi’s favorite Ramdhun, raghupati raghav raja ram, also underscored the same thing in saying that sabko sanmati de bhagwan.