How Do You Pray?

Many of us think that happiness lies on things we wish them to be, and when the wishes are granted, we can be finally happy. We thus pray day and night to whatever entity it is to give what we ask, or maybe some of us would rather wish upon a star believing in the miracle of fairy tales. People believe by having things they want and ask, their lives would be harbored in happy state.

The truth is, they fail to see that even after they are given the things they ask in prayer, and even after so many bestowed upon without even them asking for, by them cannot happiness be found there. You ask for one thing and then it's given to you, and then you'll keep asking for more things that you think would complete you or things you already have, but in the end the only is going to happen is you just crave for other things, and this is cyclic endlessly.

So tell me, how do you pray?

When we were in primary school, we asked for time to flow faster so we could soon enter middle and then high school. Afterwards we got tired of school and wanted to be more like adults and we thought it was by becoming college students. Time passed by and now we wish for jobs with high salary, then spouse, then marriage, then children, then we pray so that our children would be successful and more successful than us, then we hope our children to give us grandchildren, and then we just await death in the middle of hustle and bustle of life we've been through. Not to mention trivial materials and fleeting accomplishments we crave in between of those moments.

The way we pray, we ask. We want more. We ask more. We wish more. No matter how much we have received, we just don't feel enough of everything. Tell me, how do you pray? Praising Supreme Being to please the deity so you'd be listened and favoured? Doing all what your religious books & figures tell you to do so that according to them the Omnipotent Entity would give you what you expect?

After all of those, where is happiness? Where does happiness lie on? Where do we have to go to find it? What should we do to reach it? What to pray for it?

The truth is, even after everything is tit for tat, we won't ever be truly happy. No matter how many prayers of ours are answered, contentment will never we meet until someday we all feel exhausted and are lost in our way, no matter how much we've gained and been given.

We start to wonder why, why can't we be happy, albeit the prayers feel right, and they are all answered in affirmative way. Is it because this life is just hopeless? Is it because performing rituals talking to nobody there is just way too delusional? Is it because we are just not meant to be happy at all? We keep going as this contemplative event manages to put us in silence.

Then again, there may be where it rests, silence. The time when we finally give up on searching for a glimpse of true happiness, when we finally become quiet and trying to listen to what this world is speaking. We listen to the voices of the universe, and to the voices inside of us. We have been ignoring them for just too long. We neglect them and look for satisfaction outside trying to feed our greed. We forget the sound of mountains and sea and forget the colors of the wind. 

All we have ever done is screaming out loud trying to escape from the voices of truth — as well as spoiling our eyes by materialized beauties to blind ourselves from the light radiated by the truth — within our own selves, because we are universe, and universe is us. We are all one, and all is one, as well as interconnected each other like a string, coming from a point of singularity.

Only when after all kinds of desire are gone and every greediness has evaporated, the happiness we can be at. In the stillness of our rest without any will of hunger and thirst, we will attain the state of happiness, because true happiness is unconditional. No matter how peaceful or catastrophic this world might be, those without insecurity clouding their minds will not suffer. True happiness doesn't need requirement of materials, of temporary victory, of desires to be coming true.

So tell me again, how do you pray? Because I pray by having a moment of silence. I pray by breathing in the middle of quietness of myself and noise of this world. I listen to everything going on, and then let them go. Neither do I refuse nor grip them, because nothing is going to last for eternity, so I don't give any force, neither positive nor negative. I try putting myself in tranquility by staying still, although everyone, everything that surrounds me is volatile. I stop wanting for awhile.

I practice letting go of every desire that controls my body and having my mind in equanimity, because when things don't go our way, when they are not the way we desire them to be, what's there to grieve about? Isn't it natural for living being to meet death and then to decompose? Isn't it common for failure to visit and touch our lives? When we let things happen the way they are as in their nature, we won't be upset for the past and neither will be uneasy for the future. There is neither dissatisfaction left nor surfeit going to pop within that kind of happiness.

How do you pray? Have you found happiness in your prayer's invocation? Have you attained happiness after the prayer is intercepted and your wish is reciprocated?