The Practice of Prayer byThich Nhat Hanh - The Mindfulness Bell

The Practice Of Prayer (Continued fromPage1)
to her grandmother in herself while she ate, while she
walked, while she sat, and while she touched the earth.
When I practice sitting meditation, I always send loving
energy to my students. Sister Dam Nguyen in Vietnam and
Jim Fauss in California both have had cancer. Whether my
students know I love them or not, when I send my energy to
them, Iam sure it arrives. What matters most is thatmy
heart is open. I only need to touch the source of love inme
and send my love in my thoughts and also inmy actions.
This is a basic form of prayer that can be practiced not just
in church or a meditation hall, but in every act. You touch
the deep source of beauty and goodness in yourself and
share it.When you pray or chant the words of the Buddha or
Christ, it encourages peace in yourself, in others,and in the
environment. Behind it is the practice of mindful living.
All the Vietnamese Buddhists know this prayer (De Tu
Kinh Lay): "I have been a victim of craving, anger, arrogance,
jealousy, and confusion, living in suffering and
darkness forthousands of generations. Thanks to the light of
the Buddha, I now see the roots of my afflictions, and I vow
to begin anew to transform these afflictions in order to live
happily." This prayer is a mirror, an effort to look deeply
into ourselves and see the seeds of craving, anger, ignorance,and
confusion in us. "The light of the Buddha" is our
mindfulness. We look deeply into our negative habit
energies, see our shortcomings, and try totransform them.
"I vow to avoid wrong actions and to take the path of
goodness. I ask forthe Buddha's compassion to help me to
have a healthy body and a mind freeof suffering and
confusion." We pray for a body without disease and amind
without suffering, so wecan enjoy peace, stability, and
liberty and be released from the cycle of suffering. This
prayer helps us live a life filled with health, happiness,and
stability, free from craving, anger, and ignorance. We make
some effort, and outside efforts follow. In fact, there isno
boundary between our efforts and those from outside.
Whom should we address our prayers to? God? Buddha?
Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva? We have to look deeply into
the nature of God, the nature of the Buddha, the natureof
Avalokiteshvara. Whenever we join our palms and bow our
heads,wecan ask, "Who am I and who is the object ofmy
veneration and what is the connection between us?"If we
think there is no connection between God and us, that we
aredifferent from God, our prayer is just superstition.
When Iwas sixteen, my teacher asked me to memorize
this sentence: "The one who bows and the one who is bowed
to are both by nature empty. " Irecited this sentence for ten
years before Irealized its meaning. The Buddha is in me,
and Iam in the Buddha. We are two,yet we are one.We are
both empty of a separate self, so the communication
between us is perfect. We can pray to God, because we are a
part of God. We don't need time or space. The deep link is
immediate. There is electricity in our power line.
For prayer to bring results, the first condition is the
establishment of communication and the second is the
establishment of the electrical line, which is mindfulness,
concentration, understanding, and love. When we have these
conditions, the power line will surely work, and the result of
our prayer will be realized immediately, beyond time and
space.When body and mind are in oneness, when there is
concentration and understanding, you can touch the actual
cells of your grandmother in you, and these cells can be
transformed and healed. When you touch God, the Buddha,
or the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara in you, their energy and
your energy become one. Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva is
the symbol of love. Manjushri is the symbol of understanding.
Samantabhadra is the symbol of action with understanding.We
cannot deny their existences. When love exists,
Avalokiteshvara exists.
If God's will decides everything, what is the use of
praying? How can we change the fruit of our actions? The
answer is understanding. When we understand deeply that
our ancestors are in us, that there is no distance at all
between our cells, our grandmother's cells and our cancer
can be transformed. The will of God is also our will,
because weand God are one. If we decide to change,
everyone, even those hostile to us, will change also.
To pray, we must have great understanding. If we want
God, the Buddha, or a bodhisattva to do something for us
and if we make a kind of program for them to follow, we
may think that will make us happy. We might pray that no
living beings will be killed, no trees cut, or no river polluted
and we create a program for God to implement point by
point. But in God's program, there is also death. If insects
don't die, millions of acres of wheat may be destroyed.
Living beings eat other living beings, and the result is a kind
of balance. Do we have the insight to create a balanced
environment? If we do not, our prayer may be naive. We
pray for ourselves and those we love, but if God fulfills
these prayers it may cause disorder in the world. Our
prayers must always go together with understanding and
insight. To develop insight, we practice mindful breathing to
calm ourselves and restore the peace and serenity in us.
An American doctor has said that God is like a communications
satellite. Our wishes and aspirations are sent to
that satellite, and then God sends back grace to those we
pray for. Buddhists would call that satellite our collective
consciousness (alaya vijhana). Whenever there is a transformation
in our individual consciousness, there is also a
transformation in the collective consciousness, including the
consciousness of those we pray for. In this way, our mind is
a creator of the collective consciousness. So we have to go
back to our mind and transform ourselves. When we do so,
it is quicker than a satellite. When you send a prayer to a
satellite, it takes afew ksana (a fraction of a second) to
arrive. Even light takes time. But when we touch our store
consciousness and thereby the collective store consciousness,
the part of God that is within us, we touch God right
away.This satellite is not out in space; it is within us. As
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