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    Prayer: Interview with Dr. Larry Dossey Paid Member

    In Reinventing Medicine, (HarperSanFrancisco, 1999), Dr. Larry Dossey cites several scientific studies about the effectiveness of prayer. Medical evidence now supports the view that prayer helps in the healing process, and some studies have documented positive results of Tibetan prayer as an intercessory tool. Dr. Dossey has written eight books including Healing Words: The Power of Prayer & The Practice of Medicine (HarperSanFrancisco, 1993) and is executive editor of the journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. Today Dr. Dossey lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is former chief of staff at Humana Medical City Dallas and former co-chair of the Panel on Mind/Body interventions, Office of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Institutes of Health. What is your definition of prayer? More »
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    Prayer Paid Member

    Notions about prayer among Westerners who have turned to Buddhism are skewed by a falsely simplistic contrast between prayer in Buddhism and prayer in monotheistic traditions. For those of us who left the Jewish, Christian, or Islamic religions for the Noble Eightfold Path, the change generally encompasses a journey from a dualistic relationship with God - I and Thou - to one that stresses the efficacy of a non-dualistic view of reality. Yet a quick look at the esoteric traditions of monotheists - whether of Kabbalists, Christian mystics, or Sufis - tells us that to compare these traditions to the Sunday schools of our childhood is absurdly reductive. More »
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    Prayer: Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche Paid Member

    By Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche
    Why do we pray? We might think that if we do the Buddha, or God, or the deity will look kindly upon us, bestow blessings, protect us. We might believe that if we don’t, the deity won’t like us, might even punish us. But the purpose of prayer is not to win the approval or avert the wrath of an exterior God. To the extent that we understand Buddha, God, the deity, to be an expression of ultimate reality, to that extent we receive blessings when we pray. To the extent that we have faith in the boundless qualities of the deity’s love and compassion, to that extent we receive the blessings of those qualities. More »
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    Prayer: Interview with Robert Jinsen Kennedy Roshi Paid Member

    Kennedy Roshi was ordained as a Catholic priest in Japan in 1965 and installed as a Zen teacher in 1991 and given the title Roshi in 1997 by Bernie Glassman Roshi. He is chair of the Theology Department, St. Peter’s College, Jersey City, New Jersey, where he teaches Theology and Japanese language. How do you understand prayer as a Catholic? Prayer is a vague word. Some pray by reciting the psalms or by the liturgy or by private personal devotions or by silence. Paying attention is the foundation of any form of prayer, and that is why zazen can be a wonderful form of prayer for those who are temperamentally inclined to it. Paying attention is a reverent, grateful presence to reality and that can certainly be prayer. We need not use the words or images when we pray, but attention is essential. Is zazen as prayer problematic for a Christian who believes in a deity? More »
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    Prayer: Gareth Sparham Paid Member

    By Gareth Sparham
    The most basic Buddhist prayer is “may all beings find peace,” which expresses the positive mental state of lovingkindness. It is not a prayer directed to some higher power outside the meditator, but the articulation of an attitude; at a deeper level, an aspiration; and at a still deeper level, a commitment. Lovingkindness is cultivated by the inner expression of this “prayer,” so that the meditator not only feels the peace of an open heart, but also in order that the meditation itself is not just another act dominated by narrow, selfish aims. In the earliest Buddhist literature, such basic prayers are called brahma-viharas (“the grounds of a spiritual person”), because they are the basic underpinning of a spiritual life, turning the activity that follows into a spiritual one. Such prayer is not particularly Buddhist at all, but expresses the basic attitude of spiritual life. More »
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    Prayer: Sensei Pat Enkyo O'Hara Paid Member

    We see the word through our own mental structures - not to mention the structures of obliviously colonializing translators. As Western Zen practitioners (and, one might argue, even as Western-influenced Eastern practitioners), we practice against a background of Judeo-Christian prayer styles. We enact our Zen practice in the epistemological space that combines elements of Western religion with those of Eastern religion, in a cultural frame that includes prayer as supplication and communion. For many of us, the word prayer conjures up Cotton Mather, Billy Graham, Martin Luther King, Martin Buber, and Thomas Merton. Moreover, in Asia, Buddhism arose amidst local deities and the customs of supplication and offerings of various pantheistic traditions.More »