Sit Properly

It would start with “I’d like to make a prayer request for…” and then the church member would give the name of their loved one who was in trouble, usually sick, sometimes dealing with a larger-than-life drama. And then the whole church would make it a point to include this person (who they often didn’t even know) in their prayers. The church I went to even had a “prayer chain.” It was your typical phone tree, where one person calls another and another until pretty much all 400ish members of the church were informed and praying.

I know I don’t have many nice things to say about the Southern Baptist church I grew up in, but on this rare occasion, I’m going to say that they had it right.

In Krishna consciousness, we spend a lot of time telling people that we are personalists. Yet many of us have very impersonal personalist relationships with Krishna.

Why isn’t prayer more a part of what we do? Is it strictly a western construct? Sure, we have the maha-mantra which is begging Krishna to engage us in His personal service, but how many of us chant like that… or are we just “doing our rounds”?

Because it’s not strictly part of our philosophy, I don’t think we really know how to incorporate it. Though, that fact doesn’t stop us from incorporating pretty much anything else. From self-help seminars to pyramid money making scams, we can make almost anything “Krishna conscious.”

So why not something that could actually advance us? Like prayer.

My father, who is Baptist, yet still one of the most sincerely spiritual people I know, gave me the advice of “don’t pray for your problems to go away, pray for the strength to handle them and to learn from them.” Of course, he would be constantly prayer for other people. He was part of that “Prayer Chain.”

He has a personal relationship with Christ that rivals any devotee’s personal relationship with Krishna. He has gotten them pretty much exclusively through prayer.

I’ve seen him pray. It’s like he’s crying out like a child for help. It’s very seriously moving. He realizes he’s helpless and that the only one who can see him through this is God.

How many of us can say that?

I think this is something that really could be applied to our Krishna consciousness. In fact, there are two books by Satsvarupa Maharaja about this subject. One is called Vandanam; A Krishna Conscious handbook on prayer. The other is Entering the Life of Prayer. The first contains sastric references to prayer while the second is more of a personal journal. If you can find these books, check them out.