Prayer — Swami Avikarananda

Recorded at the Vedanta Society of Western Washington on November 26, 2017.In this lecture, Swami Avikarananda reflects on prayer as a spiritual practice and on the role it played during his own period of doubt about the existence of God. He begins with Sri Ramakrishna's teaching that a seeker should keep holy company, repeat the name of God, sing divine glories, and practice unceasing prayer. As a young spiritual seeker, Swami Avikarananda found some of these practices difficult to understand, but prayer seemed approachable even while he remained uncertain whether God actually listened. He recalls questioning the usefulness of prayer, especially when so many prayers are selfish, contradictory, or attempts to impose personal desires upon God. Drawing on Christianity, he revisits the Lord's Prayer and Jesus' instruction to pray privately rather than for public recognition, emphasizing sincerity over outward display. He also describes the influence of Thomas à Kempis's The Imitation of Christ, whose searching examination of human weakness led him toward humility and away from complete reliance on personal effort. Gradually, he came to understand prayer less as a means of obtaining desired objects and more as a way of seeking strength, peace, clarity, and the ability to endure life's difficulties without bitterness.The second half of the lecture explores how prayer can deepen into an intimate and continuous relationship with God. Swami Avikarananda explains that Hinduism allows the Divine to be approached through many relationships—as Father, Mother, child, friend, master, or beloved—according to the seeker's temperament. He recalls his own habit of walking alone and praying not primarily for himself but for others who were suffering, eventually forming prayers for the welfare of all. Sri Ramakrishna's life becomes his chief example of unceasing prayer. Looking upon God as the Divine Mother Kali, Sri Ramakrishna prayed not for wealth, knowledge, or worldly gain, but for pure love of God, surrendering both virtue and vice, purity and impurity, knowledge and ignorance. Through the parable of the kitten calling only for its mother, Swami Avikarananda illustrates complete dependence upon God, while stressing that such dependence does not mean passivity but trust. He concludes that sincere prayer gradually transforms from petition into communion: instead of asking God to remove every hardship, the seeker asks for strength to endure without losing faith. When prayer, thought, speech, and action become harmonized, he says, one's whole life itself can become an unceasing prayer.