What Are Prayers?

Prayer Tree

Mixed Media with recycled prayer flags

8" x 8" matte, image size 3.75" x 4.5"

$25 including shipping in North America

This little piece has bits of recycled prayer flags.  Is this kosher?  I never quite know what to do with my prayer flags when the strings break and they are hanging all crazy.  I know they are sending their little threads of prayers off into the world but at some point the tattered bits need to come down off my city balcony and be replaced by new ones.  So I hit upon using the left over weathered bits in art work.  I mean you can't throw your unused prayers in the garbage, can you.  No, it doesn't seem quite right.  So they go out into the world again in pieces of art.

So tonight when I looked at this piece I wondered to myself.  Self I said, what are prayers?  And the answer came back that prayers are an asking for help.  We are just asking out in the universe, out there into the mysterious unknown.  We might ask for help for someone who is having troubles, or someone who has died, or  help for the world in general or some direction for ourselves.  We can pray for anything really.  My Zen teacher has talked about asking for help.  It was such a foreign concept to most of us when we first heard it.  "What is it good to do?"  is a question she suggested we use if we were having trouble in some situation.  And then she would say that the answer would come to us in various forms.  And that we might not always recognize it when it comes.  One of her suggestions is that we ask for help and then sit quietly for a bit.  If we are not hearing an answer she suggested we ask 3 times.

What we are listening for is the still small voice.  But the answer can come as a chance meeting, a phone call, an article that appears in the paper.  We must be ready and open to hear the answer.  And we must have faith that the answer will come and trust ourselves enough to know when the answer appears.  That always was a favourite question of us students.  "How do we know it's the answer?  How can we tell a real answer from something that we conjured up in our head?"  We didn't really trust that much and our hearing skills were not very good.  We were like people with really bad eye sight and cotton batting stuffed in our ears.  We were "answer challenged" types.  And patiently our teacher would say, "If you listen long enough and get  enough practice, you will know when the answer arrives."  Sometimes I hear my answer when I ask and sit and sometimes it takes a while.  It may arrive several days later when I'm in the shower.  The shower is kind of like an answer magnet for me.

And many of our prayers don't require answers.  We are wishing safety and comfort, safe passage and an absence of suffering for some sentient beings or part of the natural world.  Fascinating research has been done suggesting that people who are prayed for fare better in medical situations, even when they are prayed for by strangers from afar and even when they don't know they are being prayed for.  It kind of boggles the western, logical scientific mind, the whole idea of prayer.  But there it is....  Another one of those things that can't be understood with the head.  It is the heart, the authentic self that really understands... and it understands it in a way that doesn't easily translate into words.  Excuse me I have some listening I have to do.

Asking For Help

Jizo (pictured here) the Bodhisattva of women, children and travelers  seems good company for a writing on "asking for help".  This mixed media piece incorporates several image transfer techniques with rusty orange and green acrylics.

I love this quote by Gary Snyder: "If you ask for help it comes, But not in any way you'd ever know."  It reminds me of the old joke about a guy who is caught in a flood.  First a row boat comes to save him and he declines saying God is going to save him.  Then he declines a power boat and a helicopter.  When he gets to heaven.  He says, " God, I thought you were going to save me."  God replies,"I sent you 2 boats and a helicopter, what did you want me to do?"

I can remember my Zen teacher giving talks  on "asking for help".  It always intrigued people and we were always left scratching our heads a little, asking, "how do I know when I get the answer?"  That is the tricky part, the part that takes practice.

It was a wonderful idea for most of us, new to a daily practice, that when we were really stumped, that we could sit down quietly and ask for help.  Ask, what is it good to do here?  And then listen.  Thing is, a lot of us aren't used to listening, to just sitting with a question in a state of openness.  It takes practice. ..... and faith.   

First there is wandering mind, and then the answering mind that thinks it knows everything.  The ability to just be still and open takes practice.  First of all it seemed like my mind always knew too much, too soon.  It didn't know how to be quiet and open.

And then there is the faith, the faith that the answer will come and faith in our ability to recognize it as an authentic answer.  The mind wants to get in there.... Maybe it's just me thinking, maybe it's not the real answer.  "Ah the doubting mind is hell."  Who said that?  And yet it is good to be careful, to be aware and consider what is going on, to walk the razors edge between care and doubt. 

What I have found is that it's a skill that like any other skill develops over time.   I find that the answer doesn't necessarily come right when I ask.  It might come when I'm having a shower or sitting in meditation another day.  These are two of the most likely receiving stations for me.  And how do I recognize the answer?  It is a sensing, a feeling, an intuitive way of knowing that evolves from our practice, from our developing awareness.

I find it is a helpful way to deal with difficult or important questions in my life.  ....Or things that completely baffle me.  It is comforting to know that I have help that I can access.  My sense of it is that these answers come from inside and outside, in an "everything is connected" kind of way.  And I love to think about the sense of mystery that is present in this world.  How much there is that we really don't know.  We are swimming in a sea of mystery and help is always nearby.  All we have to do is ask and listen.  And watch for helicopters.