Stumbling around in prayer
Approach #1
I had to laugh at myself recently. I’ve been laid up with back pain from an injury for the past couple of months. Week after week, the pain wore me down. No position relieved me — sitting, standing, walking, or lying down. The more I thought about it, the worse it seemed to get. It was so horrible that I started to pray. My prayer sounded something like this:
Please God,
If this pain goes away I will never take my health for granted again.
Thank you.
The prayer showed my desperation, imagining that there was a God out there that I could reason with. Bargain with. It was a very Western approach to prayer - where I entreated an entity out there to fix something for me down here. The trouble was, I don’t believe in the kind of God up there who answers prayers. So I kept on searching.
Approach #2
Rather than reject prayer altogether, I tried an Eastern approach. This approach to prayer looks and feels quite different. There are a variety of gods/buddhas/bodhisattvas to pray to in Eastern traditions. Refreshingly, they each symbolize an inner attribute that we already embody, such as wisdom, compassion, strength, or courage. When we “pray” to them, it is a way to call on or invoke these inherent qualities, already present in us.
This made sense to me, to interpret the god as a symbol or metaphor for an inner quality that we need to tap into. Since I thought I needed some strength to endure the horrible back pain, I looked up Vajrapāṇi, an early god in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition that represented power, strength, and courage. I tried to invoke this god’s strength:
Vajrapāṇi, lend me your strength and endurance.
So that this pain does not control me anymore.
Thank you.
The trouble was, I don’t really know this god— at least on a cultural level. I couldn’t just appropriate this god for my own purposes.
Approach #3
But maybe I did know this god, or one like it, on a spiritual level. Maybe when I listened deeply to my inner awareness I could call on some protector. I could finally find a way to invoke my inner strength.
But what I found when I quieted my mind and listened deeply wasn’t a way to endure or accept the discomfort. Who was accepting or rejecting the pain? Accepting or rejecting the pain are two sides of the same coin - and would mean identifying with an ego. An ego who is trying to accept or reject suffering.
Instead, I could acknowledge whatever was happening as a way to develop the enlightened qualities already inside of me—courage, love, forgiveness, and compassion. This was a different kind of consciousness than one derived from the ego alone. So, I created a new prayer that could accompany it:
In the face of challenges and obstacles,
May I find the courage to shape them into opportunities.
Let these hurdles become openings for love, compassion, and courage to grow.
When difficulties threaten to close my heart,
May they become chances to practice compassionate wisdom.
I acknowledge the purpose within suffering,
As it becomes a path for awakening awareness in every moment.
What is your own experience with prayer? When do you pray? What, if anything, feels authentic to you?
I am a Buddhist of sorts, and visualize Amitabha Buddha regularly, and especially when I am in pain. I think visual practices have a way of taking the focus away from the physical body. For example, I visualize Amitabha Buddha on a ceiling if I am having difficult dental work done in a dentist office. So, when I visualize Amitabha Buddha I am both doing a prayer of sort and shifting my mental focus away from the body. Amitabha Buddha is not specifically related to medical issues; I have simply chosen one Buddha to regularly practice and stuck with it.
An historical example of a different sort is Frida Kahlo painted while she was often in great pain. I think doing artwork by itself, generally, helps manage pain by simply moving the focus off the body to ethereal images--while not necessarily needing to pray too. I also think that simply visualizing something peaceful like a rose would work in a similar fashion.
I shared your prayer this morning. I sometimes attend a small Friends (Quaker) meeting North of Baltimore. I summarized your post aloud, then read the prayer at the end -- one Friend thanked me for sharing your 'poem', which could've been an artifact of how I read it.
It became the fourth verbal sharing in a series of five about transitions and the changing of seasons. Several attenders had students on their minds (perhaps you and your readers do, too). For me, it connects to a developing theme of being distracted less so that I allow awareness; pain included, right? Last night I prayed before bed and I got an unusually clear sense that I should "trust the process". I suppose I'm starting a campaign to be a better self and my execution is imperfect. It's challenging to accept but I believe I am gradually accepting the challenge OF accepting challenges again. Thank you for the prayer; it belongs in places of worship as well as solitude.