Prayer= Contradictions

Life seems entirely different now a days, where ever I look I see contradictions, may be b’coz of the thoughts I have been bearing recently.  I have been thinking about this particular word lately and it literally gave me sleepless nights. “Prayer” is that word, that thought, which invoked my utmost curiosity for the first time in my life. Not that I haven’t heard it before, but I didn’t actually give it a thought that, how this particular word sounds so……….. alien, so …… contradictory to our reasonableness. Now I really wonder how people can pray without being selfish and indulgence.  I realise how selfish I had been, by praying to almighty (who ever that is, if any one exists ).

Most of our prayers fall in the category of “petitionary prayer”. When ever we pray we are in need of something, we pray like we are submitting a petition.  People pray for various reasons, most of the time it would be personal or at least related to oneself. I can’t possibly imagine any one who prays for the good of entire humanity, at least in this 21st century. For an atheist such a situation wouldn’t be there in the first place, coz for him a god or a higher consciousness is totally nonexistent. It would be against his reason and rationale to pray, so he can be avoided in this discussion. But what about others, believers, who believe in God. Are they just like a herd of sheep herded by shepherd or are they simply using their free will to believe just like atheists, not to. There is a big conceptual inconsistency with praying that if god is “all knowing” then he must have already very well know about what we are going to ask or pray, then we really don’t need to pray. But if our praying has any affect at all, then that means we can influence our so called fate, which is already been planned by god. Personally I think, praying,singing devotional songs and poetry,praising god for his deeds were are all kind of flattery. If he fall for such feeble tricks then I have my doubts cleared. And such things are proof to the fact that we humans anthropomorphize  each and every phenomena we encountered in our early ages. It is not us who are made of god’s image but it’s the other way around. That is why we need to flatter god to grant us boons. Because we think this god entity can be influenced  the same way we can be. 

Why we never even flinch to put offerings in temples’ money box and deliberately avoid the poor. There is only one rational answer to all these questions that we as humans always make deals, even if it is with god. We believe that god has the ability to give him his investment with higher return (no proofs, yet to be proved scientifically). It  has always been about us,our needs, our welfare, our protection. It would have been a lot lot better if this “our” means all of us instead of “me and my dearies”.

How many of us can pray for such a cause,let me think ……….. still thinking  ………none, right ? that is the hard truth. Practically speaking there is no use of prayer at all. Given that if god exists and he grant us boons for us for such prayers(petitionary) then we have to conclude that he is biased and we have every right to question his sense of justice. Because praying for yourself and your father or mother or daughter would definitely fall under selfishness. The moment you were born you were seeing your parents and siblings, so you inevitably develop a kind of attachment towards them which is no less than you feel for yourself. So its no big deal to pray for them. If prayer have the affect they say it possess then why don’t they pray to end the starvation and poverty, to have peace? You can meditate to have discipline of mind and thought, but you cannot force someone to do something for you b’coz you prayed or praised him or iterated his name a thousand times by-heart.  If you believe such a thing then you are so cheap and the personality who fell for it is the cheapest and flimsiest.