All Uncles,

I've somany doubts on this topic The Prayer and Prayer for fulfilling Wishes.
First i would like to know:

1) What is Prayer? What's called as good prayer ?

2) Why should we do prayer?

3) Why do elders say Prayer is Good? What happens when we pray?

4)How are we supposed to Pray? Correctly?

5) Why dont we get involved in Praying like other things(Reading, playing Etc..)? How to do proper prayer to fullfill our desire?

Prayer WITH a desire:

6) After our wish gets fulfilled whts's the right thing we should do?

7)When a wish is not fulfilled how should we act?

Prayer WITHOUT a desire:

8] How do they act When a wish get fulfilled

9) How do they act When a wish  is not fulfilled

Jai Sai Master, Babu garu..
Jai Sai Master, Sai Bandhus..

Swarup garu and dear Srushti, Jai Sai Master..


Swarup garu, Looks like Sruishti has asked enough questions to keep us busy for the entire winter season. :-) 

Ha Ha! Just teasing you Srushti. Coming back to the questions, like Swarup garu said, probably your answers would be much better than us explaining to you. Whether they are your opinions or my opnions or anybody's or even centralized answers among all, try to attempt them and come up with the answers. Then we can discuss at length. What I observed sometimes is, we know the answers but we do not know the details of the answers. Once we know the details, then we can implement them in a much better way. right?

Regards,
Jai Sai Master!

Ananth

Jai Satwa. Jai Sai Master!

Sri Alimelu Mangamma Sahita Bharadwaja Maharaj ki Jai.

Srusti,
No. Not all prayers are good. The desires like trying to steal from God or harm others etc. are bad. Trying to fullfil such desires by any means is bad. Prayer is no exception.

Why God listens to such prayers? Well, God is equal to all so He would treat all of us equally. However, demons will not be able to escape from reactions from fullfilling such desires so they fall in this vicisous circle of having more bad desires and will never be able to get real peace, I believe.
That's why we should always pray to Sadguru to "just do what's right for me". That's the best prayer.

You are making really good points. Keep it up.

Jai Sai Master.

Jai Sai Master, Babu garu..
Jai Sai Master, Sai Bandhus..

Jai Sai Master, Vasu garu and Srushti..

Babu garu, trying to learn from the last three answers from You, Vasu garu and our dear Srushti. Please correct me fronm the inferences that I am taking based on your answers.

These are some of the things that are bugging me from what I read from the posts.

My thoughts are lying between "Just do what's right for me" and "what exactly do we want".

Until we completely develop 100% Shraddha and Saburi to be saying "Oh Sadguru, do what's right for me" (which is very very hard I believe) we still have to ask that question "what exactly do we want".

So, to be asking the correct type of "what exactly do we want"  we need satwaguna. And to develop satwaguna, we should do various things that are prescribed by the Mahatmas.

just wanted to know if I am right Babu garu..

And my next questions are.....

1) When and how can we move from the state of asking the right questions like "what do we want" to the statement "please decide what is right for me". Here, I am taking it for granted that the second question is higher in spirituality. if not.....then which one is??

2) How can we recognize that we are moving from the first question to the second question?? Do we need to recognize at all? or is it a subtle transformation? When I think about my own life and the life of my family, we sarted praying to Baba since 1979 I think. And we used to pray and vex Baba for every little thing. Please don't laugh but in my 9th standard, I prayed to Baba to stop rain right in the middle of summer  , because I had to play a cricket match on behalf of my class. Every small thing!!  But over time, thanks to Master garu, we stopped praying to every small little thing. And it's not that we forced ourselves to stop it. Somehow it just stopped over time. Now, we keep our petition before him only for matters that might change our lives in the next couple of years. Like actions that might change the way our future goes. I know we should not be asking that too, but don't know when Baba will bless to be saying "please decide what's right for us".

So, stepping back a little, do we need to recognize the steps necessary for moving from "what we want" to "please decide what is right??"

Babu garu, I would love your insight on this one. Hope I am not confusing the forum members.

Regards to all,
Jai Sai Master!

Ananth

All Uncles,

2) Why should we do prayer ??

We should do prayer to clean ourselves.So we don't get Bad thoughts.If we do the prayer correctly we won't get bad thoughts.What I meant by correct is that we get our mind to concentrate on Baba and not jump around like a monkey.

How do we control that jumping monkey ??  We can control mind with breathe.Well if for a minute we stop breathing then those bad thoughts will go away (in my interpretation). I learned that point in Matam Enduku as Master garu explains. Because our Mind (Manasu) and our life or breathe (Prana Chalanam) are related,if one doesn't function properly the other one helps fix it.

If you think this correlated statement is wrong correct me.

Jai Sai Master, Babu garu..
Jai Sai Master, Sai Bandhus..

Swarup garu, Jai Sai Master..

First off, you can always pick on me, that's how I can evolve in my thinking and that also strengthens my understanding of Master's works of how exactly to pray.

Now, going back to your post, I did not understand a little bit about what you were tring to ask me.



I think 99.99% of the people will not have the guts to ask "do what is good for her". All of us will ask "Baba please get her healthy soon. It is a rare person/bhakta like Rege who asked Baba in such a way and that's why Rege holds a special spot in Master's heart in Sai Leelamrutam.

As for the remaining people, I do not think it is wrong at all to be praying to Baba for a healthy life for ourselves or for our loved ones. Infact, I do not think it is wrong to ask of small things too. But it is my intention to let my thoughts come out to say that I, somehow, differentiated between small and big. Just like you said, "stopping rain for a 9 year maybe a good thing and a very big thing" and it may be a small thing for an adult. That is the evolution that we might make in our thought process by asking Baba.

So, I am guessing you are thinking that I feel it is wrong to be thinking "small" or "big". If I my guess is right, then let me continue.

I personally feel that 9th standard children will have different temperments as per their upbringing about living life, about friends, soceity, about spirituality, about Baba. This upbringing through their parents and peers will have a tremendous impact on how the child prays. I may have prayed Baba to stop rain, which in retrospect is silly for me, but at that time, if I were to read Master's books or if my parents or peers had explained to me that poor farmers are literally waiting with tears in their eyes hoping that atleast those tears will form the rain, then maybe JUST MAYBE I would not have prayed that way. I don't mean to put the blame on my parents or my peers or my karma. I happened to be at that state at that time which Baba deemed it necessary according to my mental strength.

So, going back to my main thinking, what I am trying to say is, it is not at all bad to be asking for small things even after knowing that they are small. Like you said, there are just better things and higher things that we can ask.

Coincidentally, you brought up a very good point in terms of asking Baba to cure a loved one. That is such an important aspect to be developed. Every time I do the parayana of Leelamrutam and I read Rege and his son in dying moments, I ask myself can we ever ever in the next 1000 lives get into that stage of "viswaasam" as Master mentioned, to be saying "Baba do what is right". Can we ever???

OR another example of Kaalu Ram, who asks his father to read a holy book before dying and father could not read it out of deep sadness in his heart. These are exemplary real life stories where Baba wants us to learn but I know it is the toughest.

Speaking from Children's point of view, somehow I feel that their heart is much purer and so whatever they ask is with a Golden heart and Baba will answer. It's left upto us to teach our children what is the right way to pray but at the same time, we have to take their decision of how they pray. We cannot force them. A case in example is, my daughter. There were some times, we explained to her why she needs to share her toys and sometimes she listened and sometimes, did not want to. But if I persist and keep on teaching her with love, I believe that she will learn someday. Maybe when she is a 7th grader, she will pray better than me when I Was a 7th grader. I will bring up that subject again, Where farmers' prayer is more of a "loka kalyaanam" than my daughter's prayer of stopping rain and there are ways to get her to understand that.

So, in terms of this thought process, yes, I do believe that asking for things can be differenetiated as "big" and "small" if that's what you wanted to know.

I just don't know whether my answer gets in line with Babu garu's post of "be careful of what you ask for you get what you pray for.."

Regards to all,
Jai Sai Master!

Ananth

interesting points ananth garu and vasu garu. I wish I could write, but i will have to be out-station for a conference and i will be back after ~7 days. Please continue with discussion i will be watching regularly. Sorry for stopping on the second questions. Please keep going Srusti, sorry about that srusti for my previous post to hold u back, when i cannot be active myself.

Om sai ram

Dear sudhakar garu, I didnot understand the meaning or/ intent of your mesage in this section. WHat has water black-out has to do with prayer/praying? I think the word" breathe" refered by our young frnd is meaning "life" in broader way. am I missing something ;-)

Om sai ram