Prayer

The Voice of Pure Devotion

"In a spatio-temporal sense at least,
this article on prayer is outside the
Christian tradition. But space and time
have only to do with physics. If there
is anything accessible to human experience
that is metaphysical (that is, "beyond
physics"), it is prayer. I therefore believe
that prayer is the true common ground
upon which all religions and all humanity
can find a unity that remains
ever-unrealized within the physical realm."
  Suhotra Swami

My readers in Catholic Poland are likely
to term my religious tradition as "Hindu."
Now, that's not really a fact, even in a
spatio-temporal sense. The word Hindu is
nothing more than a foreign
mispronunciation of the word Sindhu, the
name of a river (also known as the Indus)
in present-day Pakistan. It is not the proper
name of my religion, no more than
"Jordanism" is the proper name for
Christianity, which began in the region
of the river Jordan in Palestine. The
real name of my tradition is Vaishnavism,
which is derived from a name of God:
Vishnu, meaning "He who dwells
everywhere." For instance, Vishnu dwells
within the hearts of all creatures as their
conscience and inner guide, which we call
the Paramatma or Supersoul. Vishnu dwells
outside of each of us as the maintainer
of the form and progress of the universe.
And ultimately Vishnu is transcendental
to the material universe altogether.
In His most intimate form, known by the
name Krishna, God enjoys eternally with
His pure devotees in the supremely blissful
spiritual abode known as Goloka, which is
not a "place" in any spatio-temporal sense
at all. Goloka is a place of pure
consciousness. If our consciousness becomes
pure, we are "there." Pure prayer is the
means to enter Goloka and serve Krishna
His pastimes of unending joy. I have titled
this article The Voice of Pure Devotion to
draw the attention of my Catholic readers
to the unity shared by the Christian Bible
and the Vedic scriptures of India. In the
New Testament, the Gospel according to
Saint John, Chapter One, it is said, "In the
beginning was the word, and the word was
with God, and word was God. The same
was in the beginning with God. All things
were made by Him, and without Him was
not anything made that was made. In Him
was life, and the life was the light of men,
and the light shineth in darkness, and the
darkness comprehended it not." The "word"
mentioned here is a translation of the Greek
logos. Logos has various senses of meaning.
One is "word" or "language," from which we
get modern words like dialogue. Another
sense is the structure of thought, from
which we get the modern word logic.
A third sense is the structure of the
world around us, which we study in our
sciences of cosmology, geology, biology,
anthropology and so on. All these words
end in -logy, revealing the trace of logos.
I said that logos has various senses of
meaning. Actually, logos means "the sense
of meaning" of speech, thought and the
world -- of everything we can know or
communicate. And as we've seen in the
passage quoted from John, in the
beginning God gave the original sense
of meaning to everything in creation by
His word. Without God, there is no meaning
to anything at all. Only with God can we
sense the meaning of everything. And that,
I hope to help you understand, is the true
meaning of prayer: the giving of our voice
to the sense of everything as in God, with
God, and as God. Greek is an ancient
language full of profound concepts. Even
more ancient and profound is the Sanskrit
language. Logos, the word that was in the
beginning, the word that was with God and
is God, is known in Sanskrit as vac ("voice").
Vac is the feminine, devotional aspect of
the Godhead. You see, in my tradition, God
is known as the adi-purusa, the original
personality. That original personality displays
male and female aspects simultaneously.
This is not to be understood in a mundane,
biological sense. What I mean to say is that
the energetic (saktiman) is male, while the
energy (sakti) is female. And They cannot
be separated, no more than the sun and
its light can be separated. So Vac is the
sakti (energy) of God, the energetic. She
is with God in the beginning, in the eternity
before creation. We Vaishnavas address God
as Radha-Krishna. Radha comes from
aradhanam, a Sanskrit word meaning "worship."
We also address God as Hare Krishna.
Hare comes from hara, "the divine power."
And Krishna means "the All-Attractive."
Because He is the Perfect Being, She is
ever-attracted to serve Him. Radha-Krishna,
Hare Krishna -- these are the eternal names
and forms of the complete Godhead. Radha
or Hare is with God, and actually She is God,
for She is Krishna's energy. For instance,
in school children play with rubber bands,
stretching them and letting them fly at one
another. When a rubber band strikes a child,
she may cry out, "oh, you hit me." Actually
there was no direct contact between the
children. One child simply sent a rubber
band flying at the other. But still, that
one is accused, "you hit me." What hit
was the energy of the child. That energy
is not different from the child. Yet again,
it is different. Similarly, the energy of
God is God, and yet it is different from
Him at the same time. This simultaneous
difference and non-difference between
God and His energy is the essence of our
Vaishnava philosophy. All things are made
by God through His energy of speech
(logos, or vac-sakti), and thus all things
are in one sense the same as God, and
in another sense different from Him.
This oneness and difference are indicated
in the Gospel of John with these words:
"In Him was life, and the life was the
light of men, and the light shineth in
darkness, and the darkness comprehended
it not." Life is eternal. God is the
Supreme Soul, ever-existing, and we tiny
individual souls are His effulgence, each
of us like a tiny photon (particle) of
timeless life and light. In pure spiritual
consciousness, God and the souls share
the same quality of eternality, knowledge
and bliss. They are One, but since it is
a Oneness of love, there is a Difference
of love too. For example, a boy and a girl
who love one another are one in that they
are inseparable. Yet again, the difference
between them makes their mutual
enjoyment possible. As we see from
the Gospel of John, the light of spirit,
of eternal life and light, shines forth from
God into darkness, or avidya (ignorance).
According to the Vedas, God sends forth
some of the countless effulgent souls into
the darkness of material existence because
of their desire to enjoy separately
from Him. A soul in ignorance does not
comprehend his eternal life. In ignorance,
then, the oneness between the soul
and God seems lost, while the difference
between them seems terrifying. God is
never in ignorance. But the soul in material
existence is. The soul's ignorance is
forgetfulness of God due to contact
with matter. When we forget God,
we instantly think, "I am matter."
Thus instead of enjoying our true
spiritual nature of eternality,
knowledge and bliss, we suffer the
opposite: repeated birth and death,
ignorance and unhappiness in the material
body. The vac-sakti, the Divine Voice by
which the meaning of everything is
understood, pervades both the spiritual
and material realms. In the spiritual
realm Vac is self-apparent: everything
there exists only for the loving glorification
of God. But here in the material world,
Vac is hidden -- hidden by our own ignorance.
Therefore it must be revealed to us by one
who is in knowledge. Knowledge, in the
Sanskrit language, is Veda. Vac, the Voice
of Pure Devotion to God, is the mother of
the Vedic scriptures. Now, what kind of
person is able to know Veda in this world
of ignorance? As Goddess Vac herself
states in the Rig Veda (10.125.5):
"He whom I love, that one I make a
saintly person, that one a seer of the
truth, that one a wise sage." Who does
Goddess Vac, the mother of the Vedas,
love? She loves that one who loves God.
And to that person She gives the power
of prayer, the Voice of Pure Devotion.
Thus true prayer is an expression of
pure love of God. And pure love of God
is the meaning of everything. In a biography
of Saint Francis of Assisi, we find this
statement: "The happiness beyond all
happiness comes from loving God and
feeling oneself loved by Him." This
happiness beyond all happiness is the
happiness of our original nature as pure
spirit, which needs nothing material to
sustain its existence. Some people pray
to God for the happiness of physical
satisfaction. Others pray for the happiness
of wealth. Still others pray for the happiness
of a long life in the body. But these kinds
of happiness are not real happiness.
Therefore these kinds of prayers are not
real prayers. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu,
the original founder of the Hare Krishna
movement in India five hundred years ago,
prayed in this way: "O Lord of the universe,
I do not desire material wealth, materialistic
followers, a beautiful wife or to achieve
anything else the poets of this world describe
in flowery language. All I want, life after life,
is unmotivated devotional service to You." In
the original Sanksrit, Sri Caitanya's prayer
closes with the words bhavatad bhaktir
ahaituki tvayi, "Let there be bhakti
(pure devotion) with no motives unto You."
This is the prayer of a pure soul to his pure
God in pure love. I have heard people say,
"But if we pray like that, how will we live?
After all, we are not disembodied souls
floating in empty space. We have so many
needs to attend to in our present condition.
" I answer their question with another question:
"Do you think God is a miser? If you simply
pray to God, `I want You and You alone,
for You are the true and only shelter of
my life," do you think He will neglect you
in any way?" After all, God is a person -
- the greatest, kindest, gentlest, most
loving and most beautiful person. What
endears us to the people we know? Is it
our friendship, or our demands of them?
Obviously, if you are a friend to someone
and he is a friend to you, he will naturally
want to help you in so many ways. But if
you pester someone, "give me this, give me
that," without showing any true feeling
for him as a person, he'll not be pleased
with your company. What we Vaishnavas
call "material religion" is based upon this
pestering process. What we call "spiritual
religion" is based upon love. Spiritual
prayer is the echo within our hearts of
the original Voice of Pure Devotion, which
cries out for Her Lord in the acute anxiety
of separation. "O Govinda (Krishna)! Feeling
Your separation, I am considering a moment
to be like twelve years or more. Tears are
flowing from my eyes like torrents of rain,
and I am feeling all vacant in the world in
Your absence." This is another beautiful
prayer composed by Sri Caitanya. There
is a transcendental mystery to His identity.
He appeared in this world as a sannyasi,
a wandering ascetic. In fact, He is
Radha-Krishna Themselves, Who mix
together in loving ecstacy as one person
stricken by the deepest of divine emotions.
Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu gave the world
the simplest and most sublime formula for
prayer: the Hare Krishna maha-mantra,
which expresses the essence of all pure
religion: "Oh my Lord Krishna, Oh Hare,
Energy of the Lord, kindly engage me in
your blissful service." The Hare Krishna
maha-mantra is chanted thusly:

hare krishna hare krishna
krishna krishna hare hare
hare rama hare rama
rama rama hare hare

Each of us individual souls are the property
of the Divine Couple, Radha and Krishna.
We are meant only for Their pleasure (rama).
That is the true meaning of our existence,
and that meaning is revealed by the Voice
of Pure Devotion, which is expressed in this
world as the Vedic scriptures, the essence
of which is the Hare Krishna maha-mantra.
By Vedic scriptures, I do not mean simply
a canon of religious texts from India.
I mean the record of all the prayers of
all pure devotees of all time and places
whose motive was only love for God.
All these saintly persons adhere to the
logos, the Vac, the revealed word of God
that cries out for Him and Him alone.