Spring 2021, Volume 48
Feature
What Is Prayer?
Religious Studies: The Key Concepts (Routledge, 2010) defines “prayer” as a form of communication between humans and higher powers. It also describes prayer as a way of evoking experiences, moods, emotions, and values by utilizing a network of symbols; a ritual act; and an act by which one identifies with and reinforces one’s membership in a community.
On the level of our lived experience, we may have observed that when people of many religious traditions lose members of their families or friends, they mourn their deaths and pray that their souls will rest in peace. We see many people attend memorial services held by national or local governments to pray for the victims of wars and natural disasters. Praying may also bring spiritual peace to those who pray and may help them regain the strength to go on with their lives despite the pain of loss.
Numerous scientific studies have found that prayer has some therapeutic effects. Generally, research has shown that people who pray regularly are less likely to become ill, and with prayer they tend to recover more quickly. Interestingly, the sick seem to benefit not only from their own prayers but from the prayers of well-wishers as well.
In many countries where the state and religion are officially separated, religion is considered to belong to the private sphere. Whether or not prayer should be permitted in public institutions is often a contentious issue. But is prayer an act that always promotes a religion? Cannot prayer be independent of religious faith? Is there such a thing as non-sectarian prayer, and if so, what would it entail?
Why do people pray? Is prayer a universal feature of religious traditions? How do different religions understand the act of praying, and what roles does it play in their traditions? What kind of effects does prayer have on the human mind and on society in general? Does prayer have power in and of itself? We will examine different aspects of the act of praying and what it means in the lives of people today.
Prayer in Rissho Kosei-kai and the Power of the Sangha
by Takanori Kumano
Prayer is a wish, an expression of love and hope for a change for the better in the situation in which we and others find ourselves.
Contemplating Prayer
by David R. Loy
Although theistic prayer is often petitionary (“God, please do this . . .”) in a way that assumes God is separate from us, is there another way to understand prayer? Aren’t there other ways to pray?
A Shin Buddhist Perspective on Prayer: Petitionary Prayers and Prayers for Buddhist Awakening
by Kenneth K. Tanaka
In this realm of saṃsāra (the cycle of births and deaths) we are unable to eliminate all the difficulties of life on the horizontal level so as to get things to go our way. So what is called for is to cultivate the vertical path.
The Christian Meaning of Prayer as Intercession
by Juan Masiá
One aspect of the Christian prayer of intercession [is] the request for divine favor on behalf of another, for instance, asking for recovery of the health of a sick person.
Revisiting “Homage to Hell, the Great Bodhisattva” Today
by Masaki Matsubara
Hell does not exist somewhere in a different dimension that we fall into after death but, rather, . . . hell is not far from us: it is based in our own minds.
Prayer in Shugendo
by Gaynor Sekimori
Perhaps the easiest way to understand the meaning of prayer in Shugendo is to depersonalize its subject. To offer sutras at a sacred site or kneel before a material representation of the sacred, such as a statue, is to insert oneself by these means into the life force of the universe itself.
Prayer as Action: Buddhist Priests During COVID-19 in Japan
by Levi McLaughlin
Prayer is not an isolable element . . . ; prayer is folded into a larger framework of devotion, and that devotion is best understood in terms of action.
What Is Prayer?
by Tomoshi Okuda
Prayer . . . is not a human act; it is the act of a deity. It begins not with praying to God but with being prayed for by God. It is this reversal that lies at the heart of prayer.
Zen Prayer? Maybe, Maybe Not
by Pamela D. Winfield
There is a certain internal irony to the Zen tradition that technically eschews language and any form of prayer to a higher power yet in actual practice delights in language and broadly prays for individual and collective well-being in the form of kitō prayers.
Rissho Kosei-kai Buddhism
Prayer in Rissho Kosei-kai
by Dominick Scarangello
In Rissho Kosei-kai, prayer is an aspiration, an expression of the fundamental vow of Mahāyāna Buddhist bodhisattvas to help liberate all beings. A vow is not simply a hope that remains locked within our hearts, it is also a promise. Like all promises, a vow is something that we aspire to by working to accomplish what we have pledged to do.
